
<^'^^'%^'%><^<%.<«L<*.<%,<%,^><^%/G] 



AMERICAN LEAVES 



Jamtliar 'Notts of Sljougljt antr Cife. 



By SAMUEL OSGOOD, 

AUTHOR OF 
THE HEARTHSTONE," "STUDIES IN BIOGRAPHY," "STUDENT LIFE," ETC., ETC. 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
1867. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and 
sixty-six, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. 



Utebication 



THE AUTHOR DEDICATES THIS VOLUME TO THE PASTOR AND 
FRIEND OF HIS YOUTH, 

Rev. JAMES WALKER, D.D., 

LATE PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, WHO IN HIS 

RETIREMENT ILLUSTRATES THE DIGNITY OF 

THE SCHOLAR AND THE SAGE. 



P R E F A C E. 



The papers ^hat make up this volume were written at leis- 
ure hours, of late years, on the spur of various occasions and 
experiences, and, with a single exception, they have in sub- 
stance appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine. They of 
course differ widely in style and topic, and range freely into 
various fields of thought and observation, yet they agree in 
being in close sympathy with American life in treating the 
struggles, fears, hopes, and aspirations of our common lot. 
There is no attempt at the regular order of an ethical or 
philosophical treatise, yet there is something of interior unity 
in the volume, and attentive readers may perhaps own that 
there is more of the reality than the show of careful and con- 
sistent thinking. 

' Some thirteen years ago the Harper Brothers invited me 
to write for their Magazine, and I have done so more or less 
frequently since. If my humble experience is worth quoting, 
I will say honestly what has been the result of the effort. It 
seemed to me an awkward and difficult thing for a man per- 
haps over-scholastic in his thoughts and studies to write for 
the many in the most popular of American magazines, and I 
began with a good deal of diffidence. Now, after these years 
of occasional service, I can express my gratitude to the 
Monthly for two principal reasons — one of them expected, the 
other unexpected. I expected to have something of the stiff- 



viii Preface. 

ness of our too common clerical style taken out, and to learn 
an easier and happier diction, but I did not expect so much 
encouragement to the freest utterance of the most interior 
and sacred thoughts on the most important subjects. I have 
enjoyed this relation to a great circle of readers much, and 
have tried not to abuse their good will by crude or unworthy 
thinking, playful as at times may be the manner, and free and 
intimate the mention of personal friends and associations. It 
is to be hoped that the Monthly, that is a classic in American 
families and libraries on account of its admirable compend 
of current history, may not lose its hold by the liberal wish 
of its proprietors to add thoughtful essays from various pens 
to its exciting store of sketches and stories, and its instructive 
papers upon popular subjects. 

This volume is published mainly at the request of friends, 
who ask for a home book that shall win the same kindly place 
in the family with that which was granted to previous publica- 
tions in a similar vein of serious thought and kindly sympathy. 

Sam'l Osgood. 

New York, December, 1866. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Little Children IJ 

Our Old Pew . 33 

School Influences 55 

American Boys \ 7 l % 

American Girls • • • • 93 

Fortune lI 7 

The Flag at Home x 39 

Learning Statesmanship 165 

Off-hand Speaking J 93 

Art among the People 227 

American Nerves 2 53 

The Ethics of Love 281 

Garden Philosophy 3°5 

Easter Flowers 335 

Toward Sunset 359 



I. 

Little Children. 



AMERICAN LIFE 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 

npHE arrival of a baby in a family is a not very unusual 
occurrence ; and without any very elaborate antiquarian 
investigation, we may safely believe that such events date 
back to the remotest ages, and are likely to continue for 
ages to come. Yet the coming of the little stranger is 
always a great circumstance ; and once in our lifetime, 
however quiet may be our temperament or small our am- 
bition, we make a> sensation, and are the observed of all 
observers. The baby, who is usually awaited with anxiety, 
is welcomed with open arms ; and in spite of the present 
formidable aspect of the bread question, and the frequent 
reason for calculating the proportion between the size of 
the bread-basket and the number of mouths waiting to be 
fed, the new claimnant contrives to find a home with a 
hospitality perhaps quite as cordial in lowly as in stately 
households. Immediately the new-comer begins to show 
that marked characteristic of every new age, the revolu- 
tionary spirit; and the first shrill cry that announces his 
advent heralds his assault upon all the settled habitudes 
of the family. Every thing must yield not so much to his 
whims as to his dependence, and the whole family, from 



14 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the old grandfather — if such venerahle head there be — 
down to the least pet of the nursery who has just graduated 
from babyhood, is enlisted by a resistless sympathy in the 
service of the little pensioner. The baby rules in the ma- 
jesty of his weakness; and while other thrones are per- 
haps becoming a little shaky, this majesty keeps its seat 
and stands among the established institutions of our race. 
We are writing perhaps somewhat pleasantly upon so 
grave a theme as childhood ; but we trust that our cheery 
tone, like the laugh of childhood itself, w T ill be found to win 
tenderness, as well as to express joy. "We confess to being 
lovers of little children, not only in the abstract but in the 
concrete ; and while well aware that the stern lessons of 
political economy may hint a certain limit of moderation 
in the philoprogenitive ambition, we know of no reasonable 
limit to the affection, and have no fears that good Jean 
Paul's creed will become too popular — that creed which 
all catechisms might admit, " I love God and little chil- 
dren." In fact, the affection that little children win from 
us interprets God's love to us. God loves us not because 
we can help Him, but because He helps us ; and the best 
that he asks of us is that we should be willing to let Him 
help us by his providence and grace. He is glorified not 
by rising above Himself — for the All-mighty and All- 
perfect can not rise above Himself — but by his conde- 
scension ; and the anthem " Glory to God in the highest," 
was heard on earth when the Eternal Being descended to 
our humanity and dwelt with the Holy Child at Bethle- 
hem. As we in our poor way repeat that condescension, 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 15 

we have a nearer sense of God's love ; and as we befriend 
those whose helplessness claims our care, we rise to new 
wisdom and new joy. We may not, indeed, entertain any 
su^h philosophy of loving-kindness, yet may none the less 
have its fruits; and undoubtedly the new peace that comes 
into a family with the little child's coming is proof that 
the hearts that reach down in such tenderness to that little 
one are not only opened by parental affections, but also by 
filial faith, and the soul, like the seed-corn, as it presses its 
roots into the earth, opens its leaves toward heaven to 
drink in the rain and the sunshine of God. Whatever 
may be the reason, God's blessing goes with babies, and we 
do not care to say what kind of a world this would be with- 
out their presence. The monk and nun share in the bene- 
diction, and if nowhere else, they find something to pet 
even in the hour of their devotion, and there is to them 
something human as well as divine in the holy mother and 
child over the altar. The priest is no priest of God unless 
he leads little children to the good Shepherd ; and as to the 
celibates not under ghostly vows, the bachelors and maids 
among us, we can promise them little true peace unless 
they continue — as they generally do — to care for some 
brother or sister's children in the absence of any of their 
own. 

We are the more ready to say our word for children 
because, in spite of the manifest tenderness of our Ameri- 
can people toward their offspring, there are symptoms of a 
national conspiracy against childhood, and Herod is out- 
Heroded — not by any wholesale slaughter of innocents, 



16 AMERICAN LIFE. 

for such an assassin would be torn into inch pieces by our 
mothers before he put his hand upon the second victim, 
but by the prevalent impatience of the slow march of 
nature, and the rage for crowding the early bud forward 
into premature flower and fruit. If many people could 
have their way there would cease to be any more little 
children, and the babies in long clothes would stride forth 
in pantaloons or petticoats to astonish beholders with pre- 
cocious feats, as marvelous as the duties of the learned 
fleas, and quite as honorable to our humanity. We, of 
course, protest, as we have done before, against this whole 
forcing process in every stage of its development, and 
most of all in the early stage when the plant is so tender 
that fatal violence may be done to its delicate organism. 

We say then, first of all, let us secure to our little chil- 
dren their proper naturalness, or their just place and devel- 
opment under that system of natural law to which in their 
physical constitution they belong. Their own mother's 
bosom should be the first guaranty of this natural right, 
and we are quite willing to be voted very stupid and old- 
fashioned in insisting that every mother should nurse her 
own child if she possibly can. We have no words to ex- 
press our condemnation of the idea, becoming in quarters 
of somewhat equivocal fashion not uncommon, that the 
mother's natural office should be made over to some hire- 
ling, and that it is better to trust the hope of the family 
to some strange breast — perhaps to some half ogress with 
blood tainted with rum or what is worse — than break the 
mother's rest, or keep her from midnight routs, by care of 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 17 

her child. If a mother is stinted by nature in the foun- 
tains of aliment, she must submit to her privation and do 
the best in her power to supply her loss by other aid, but 
even then she ought not to think her care abated, but 
rather increased, by the transfer ; and no wealth nor ser- 
vice can dismiss the mother's eye from its providential 
watch over her offspring. We believe in refinement, and 
are lovers of elegance; but we hold the refinement and 
elegance to be empty pretension that undertake to slight 
honest human instincts, and try to be wiser than God and 
nature. We are not, indeed, ambitious of playing the 
physiologist, and entering into the particulars of the nur- 
sery, diet, bathing, clothing, and exercise of children. It 
is clear that immense errors prevail in each of these res- 
pects; and the bills of mortality, that show so large a 
portion of our race to be cut off in infancy, prove that all 
the mistakes are not to be charged to the doctors, and that 
so costly and precious a product as human life is most lav- 
ishly and recklessly squandered. The old system of over- 
dosing has been matched by the new system of overpetting 
or overtraining ; and perhaps as many children have been 
destroyed by being daintily kept from the fresh air and free 
muscular activity as of old were destroyed by the laudanum 
bottle and its attendant abominations. We can not rejoice 
too much in the comparative emancipation of the nursery 
from the apothecary's shop, and are quite sure* that the 
regular medical practice is not surrendering all the honors 
of this emancipation to the votaries of infinitesimals, but 
is disposed to give even less medicine to children than 



18 AMERICAN LIFE. 

anxious parents often desire. Let this negative reform be 
carried out into a more positive policy, and all the blessed 
agencies of light, air, and water, and motion will win new 
honors in the field so long occupied by drugs, and often 
make grassy play-grounds a better herbarium than gardens 
of balm and poppies, saffron and senna and rhubarb. 

We are well aware that the idea of entire naturalness 
may be carried so far as to be run into the ground ; and 
some of our own champions of nature so glorify instinct at 
the expense of discipline as to remind us of what Voltaire 
said of some of the extravagances of poor Rousseau — they 
made him feel like getting down and going on all fours. 
Yet it will be found that they are poor students of Nature 
who find any follies in her teachings; and the freest physi- 
cal development will be helped instead of being harmed 
by due regard to the superior moral and intellectual laws. 
Thus the proper check upon indolence and the sensual pas- 
sions is found in the just development of the higher mus- 
cular and nervous faculties, and the child who is physically 
well educated is by this very fact raised above the merely 
animal life by being made physically as well as morally a 
truly human creature. That we too often miss the due 
method of physical discipline appears not only from the 
frequent sickness of children, but from the stiffness and 
want of ease that seem to possess them as soon as they 
come under our training hand, and to present them to the 
world as the only young creatures that are not free and 
graceful in their movements. We have made some im- 
provements in the dress of boys and girls, that give nature 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 19 

fairer play; yet much remains to be done to complete 
the emancipation, by putting off all cramping encum- 
brances and allowing every limb and muscle full sweep. 
Instead of leaving the fashions of dress to a set of modistes, 
we would submit them to a council of artists and phy- 
sicians, and so strike a brave blow at once for beauty and 
health in the nursery, with the hope that the offspring of 
God's noblest creature might not always surrender the palm 
of grace and freedom to kittens and lambs. 

The question of the intellectual discipline of children is 
closely connected with their physical training, and many 
are the victims of the book and the school-room. The old 
method was to consider the school as a kind of prison- 
house for the scions of our perverse humanity, where 
learning was to be forced down reluctant throats by terror, 
in the absence of any intrinsic charms in the medicinal 
draught. The staple of study was in the main the work 
of the memory, and improvement was measured, like brick- 
laying, by the foot, the quantity laid being final proof of 
the work done. Rules of grammar and arithmetic that 
had no sort of lodgment in the juvenile understanding 
were laboriously committed to memory, and verses of 
Scripture and poetry were learned without stint. This 
old-fashioned system is exploded, to the infinite relief of 
millions of otherwise cramped muscles and aching heads. 
It will be well if the new system does not fall into another 
kind of narrowness by dismissing the memory from its 
rightful office, and forcing little children to be philosophers 
before their time. Childhood loves variety, and the alter- 



20 AMERICAN LIFE. 

nation of activities that is so essential to the comfort and 
energy of us all is imperiously necessary to the develop- 
ment and even to the sanity of children. They soon weary 
of one thing, and judicious training will seek to study the 
laws of mental alternation so as to secure unity in variety, 
and by the interchange of exercises lead out the faculties 
in due order and force. Nothing is clearer than that little 
children are soon tired of one attitude of body, and a 
careful observer will note the same weariness of one atti- 
tude of the mind. The little fellow who has been sitting 
an hour aches to stand or walk or run ; and so, too, when 
he has been receiving impressions from his book or teacher, 
he aches to change his mental attitude, and give exj:>ression 
to his feelings or ideas by some positive act. If we scru- 
tinize this necessity of change, we shall find a remarkable 
illustration of it in the senses most essential to education, 
which are created as if it were in couples, as if to relieve 
guard with each other. The nerves of sensibility exchange 
labors with the nerves of motion, so that when we receive 
a sensation we long to make some coiTesj^onding muscular 
movement, and our condition is intolerable when our nerves 
are constantly excited and our muscles are kept in rest. 
The ear and the eye, each in its way, illustrate this law by 
alternating with their natural allies the voice and the hand. 
When we have listened, we long to speak; and when we 
have seen, we long to touch. So, on the other hand, when we 
have spoken we are ready to listen, and when we have touch- 
ed we are the more ready to see. The same interchange of 
functions may be traced throughout all the faculties of the 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 21 

mind, and it will be a new day in the education both of 
young and old when the vast significance of this law is 
discerned, and by a wisely-adjusted alternation of exercises 
variety and unity of culture may be secured, and monotony 
and fickleness may be alike set aside. It will be then 
found that the just discipline of children is not the dull, 
unwholesome thing which it is often supposed to be, and 
that the work of the school-room may gain not a little life 
and force from the sports of the play-ground. We do not, 
indeed, propose to do away with all hard work in school ; 
for if there were no hard work there could be none of the 
happy feeling of relief when it is done, and play would 
lose its zest if all the hours were pastime. What we ask 
is that study should be in accordance with and not against 
the nature of the mind, and so the terrible habit be 
shunned that makes study so false and spectral, and shuts 
the world of books out of the free air and bright sunshine 
of nature and of God. The very tones which children, 
even bright children, often fall into the moment they open 
a book tell the whole story; and the transition from the 
free, ringing voice of the play-ground to that formal drawl 
or whine, proves that the mistake of separating words from 
things has begun thus early, and the blight of pedantry 
has fallen upon these fresh and opening buds of our hope 
and joy. 

We suppose that the root of most mistakes in the ed- 
ucation of little children comes from overlooking the 
important distinction between the lessons that are to be 
put into them and the mental life that is to bo brought out 



22 AMERICAN LIFE. 

of them; or, iu other words, from forgetting that the mind 
is not a sheet of blank paper to be written upon, but a leaf 
whose vital organism is to be developed. Children are 
thus not only to be taught, but they are to be animated ; 
and the proof of their proficiency is not so much in what 
they know as in what they are. Sometimes the con- 
trast between the child's own mind and his learning is most 
striking; and if frequently the lesson is in advance of the 
little student's thought, the thought is not seldom in ad-, 
vance of the lesson — as in the case of those startling 
questions and marvelous fancies with which the pets of the 
nursery sometimes confound the wiseacres of the parlor and 
library. Probably these questions and fancies take the 
child quite as much by surprise as they do the parent, and- 
they come not from any theory or purpose, but from some 
spontaneous impulse, which shows that, in childhood as in 
maturity, the mind within us, God's generous and myste- 
rious gift, is greater and more fruitful than our own will or 
calculation. Whether we think of it or not, a large part 
of the archness of little children which so delights us 
comes from this contrast between their mind and their 
acquirements. There is a charm in the lisp of their words, 
as in the stumbling of their steps, that presents to us in 
playful contrast their great aspirations and their small 
achievements. There is something in them very young, 
and something very old, and the jumble of bright intuitions 
and funny mistakes in their expressions reminds us of the 
odd figure which some urchin of the nursery cuts when he 
buries his head under his father's ponderous hat, or nestles 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 23 

in Lis grandfather's roomy arm-chair, with spectacles 
gravely mounted upon the minature nose. The old ele- 
ment in children comes from the rational principle which 
is not the creature of the schools but the gift of God; and 
it is the flashes from this true light that so often startle us 
with signs of intelligence in children quite as incongruous 
with their years as father's hat or grandfather's arm-chair. 
It is important that this distinction should be carefully 
noted both in school education and at home ; for ill fares 
the training that counts the mind as naught but a passive 
tablet, and the lesson as the only vital power. Even the 
faculty that holds the humblest place in the scale, and is 
usually thought to be the mere drudge or baggage-master 
of the intellect — the memory — is not a passive tablet, but 
a vital force, and holds no truth firmly without taking it as 
a truth to be assimilated with some measure of vital sense, 
instead of a dead tradition to be buried. A little child's 
memory is surely a living force, and any thoughtful ob- 
server who watches its spontaneous play, as it produces and 
reproduces its vivid impressions of scenes and characters in 
such marvelous round, will not wonder that the ancients 
called Mnemosyne the Mother of the Muses, since the 
fancies of the nursery, as well as the inventions of the 
drama and the epic, come from the mysterious power that 
receives all impressions of nature and life, and recombines 
or remembers them in such vivid and novel combinations. 
We who have children of our own know well that the 
degrading theory of the materialist as to the native powers 
of our children is far less reasonable than the poet's beauti- 



24 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ful picture of the exuberance of these jjowers in their 
spontaneous play, and that the faculty of memory thus 
presented by Wordsworth deserves more respect, and 
claims more inspiration, than dull pedants believe : 

" Behold the child among his new-born blisses — 
A six years' darling of a pigmy size ! 
See where, 'mid work of his own hand, he lies, 
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, 
With light upon him from his father's eyes ! 
See at his feet some little plan or chart, 
Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
Shaped by himself with newly learned art , 

A wedding or a festival, 

A mourning or a funeral ! 

'* And this hath now his heart, 
And unto this he frames his song : 

Then will he fit his tongue 
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 

But it will not be long 

Ere this be thrown aside. 

And with new joy and pride 
The little actor cons another part, 
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage' 
With all the persons down to palsied age 
That life brings with her in her equipage ; 

As if his whole vocation 

Were endless imitation." 



Happy will it be for us when such true and cheerful 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 25 

philosophy is carried out in our schools and households; 
and, while all wholesome instruction is given and firm dis- 
cipline is applied, all care shall be used to quicken the in- 
tellectual faculties without cramming them with crude ver- 
biage, and, to bring out the active will without breaking 
its buoyant spring under arbitary appliances. There is 
something in the free and healthful development of a child's 
mind that acts upon his whole future, and justifies us in 
applying to it one of the sacred words of religion, or in 
calling the child mentally regenerate who is thus newly and 
well born into the atmosphere of truth and resolution. 
Too many of us bear the marks of the cramping process 
from our childhood, as of an imperfect birth ; and it is not 
only in crooked spines and round shoulders that we have 
reason to remember the twists and stoop that set their 
mark upon us in our tender years. 

What we have said of physical and intellectual training 
applies with equal force to the heart, or to the whole range 
of our affections and desires. It is by the heart that little 
children mainly rule us, and by this that we should rule 
them. In fact it is impossible to separate their affections 
from their senses and thoughts, or to run through their 
mental processes any thing like the sharp line of demarca- 
tion which metaphysicians run between ideas and emotions. 
Even the bodily senses of a bright child are full of affection, 
and a red apple or a downy peach is grasped and devoured, 
not in gluttonous sensualism, but in rapturous enthusiasm, 
as if the palate were connected with the highest sensibili- 
ties, and a sweet taste, like a delicious fragrance, could waft 

B 



26 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the fancy into the land of the blessed. We profess to 
know children pretty well, and we have seen too much of 
the old Adam in their moods and freaks to allow us to call 
them angels ; yet we do sacredly recognize in them a 
wealth of ready affection which it is treason against God 
and humanity to deny or to neglect. Their veiy weakness 
is ready to open into a precious grace if we will only guide 
it wisely, and the child's natural dependence soon rises into 
a filial faith. This trusting temper in them is a great com- 
fort to us, by rewarding our protection, and when wisely 
guided it is a great blessing to them, by leading them to the 
true rock of reliance. There is something in the perfect 
trust in which a little child comes to our arms that opens 
all the springs of loving-kindness ; and if the lion passions 
within us are ever near the golden age when they are to lie 
down with lamb-like gentleness, it is when a little child leads 
them. This ready confidence goes naturally with a spon- 
taneous good-will, and nothing pleases the little one more 
than to be employed in some affectionate service, so that 
often the best cure for a freak of petulance is a call to some 
small mission of love. A bright boy of one of our friends 
took on bitterly and would not be comforted when he heard 
that his father was going to Europe, but immediately dried 
his tears when told by his father that he was expected to 
look after the family, and especially to look after mother's 
comfort. Although just out of his petticoats he was de- 
lighted with the idea of doing some thing, and so proved 
the wisdom of that philosophy which prescribes active kind- 
ness to others as the medicine for our own complaints. 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 27 

The young heart that so easily trusts and loves has quite 
as ready a spring of joy, and it is marvelous upon how 
small a capital unspoiled children can be happy. Too soon we 
allow them to unlearn this blessed alchemy, and, instead of 
turning all things into gold by the sunshine of their native 
glee, they are perversely led to wish to turn gold into all 
things by the dazzling glare and feverish heat of false fash- 
ions. Any one may see the two methods at a glance who will 
take an exact account of what a healthy child in the coun- 
try needs to set him up in the full play of his joy, and com- 
pare it with the huge and never-ending inventory of novel- 
ties and dainties which are essential, we will not say to the 
happiness, but to the decent quiet of one of the pet speci- 
mens of our too artificial city manners. A half dollar will 
buy the marbles, top, and hoop that will insure the delight 
that is rarely won by the uncounted gold that is lavished 
on costly toys and trashy confectionary. It is well to keep 
this native fountain of joy open and flowing, for whether 
wealth or limitation be the lot of our children, they can 
have from us no better heritage than the habit of enjoying 
single pleasures, and thriving on " human nature's daily 
food" — the common gifts of good Providence. A child in 
the family with this spirit is a well-spring of comfort that 
refreshes the whole house with living water; and the 
care-wom father, as he comes home from his business and 
takes such a little piece of blessedness to his heart, needs 
no metaphysics of optimism to make him believe that God 
is good, nor any brandy or billiard table to give his spirits a 
reaction from the yoke of labor. 



28 AMERICAN LIFE. 

How to secure a child's heart in its proper trust, affection 
and joy, is, of course, a great question, and we do not aim 
to have any new theory of moral and religious training. Of 
one thing, however, we are quite sure — the superiority of 
practical example over all speculative teaching. A child 
may have morality and religion, yet can not easily be a 
theoretical moralist or theologian, and must learn of God 
and humanity in the school of actual life and genuine ex- 
perience. The true way to teach little children moral and 
spiritual realities is by presenting these as realities, and 
allowing the facts to precede and suggest the interpretation, 
just as, in the study of nature, the things go before the 
definitions, and the flowers and the stars are seen with the 
eye before botany and astronomy are read with the under- 
standing. On this principle a true and genial home-life is 
better discipline for the child than any lectures on domestic 
economy, and a broad and earnest church-life is far better 
than bodies of divinity or libraries of ecclesiastical history. 
In this conviction thoughtful and practical persons of all 
religious creeds seem to be agreeing ; and there is some- 
thing quite emphatic and encouraging in the universality 
and warmth of the desire to open the fold of the Good 
Shepherd to the young lambs, and nurture children in the 
faith 'that the Christian Church is their true home, and 
they go from their own Providential mother in renouncing 
or slighting her watch and care. Nothing is more marked 
in the religious history of our own country than the grow- 
ing disposition to secure to childhood its spiritual birth- 
right, and to confirm a holy faith by the charms of early 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 29 

association, as well as by the light of timely instruction. 
If the strength of our national attachment to Christianity 
were to be put to the test, it would be found to have quite 
as strong a hold upon us by its little tendrils as its stout 
branches, and that many a strong will is fastened to the Rock 
of Ages by the loving faith of little children, those tendrils 
of the human vine. 

We could write on to any length upon a topic so winning; 
but we must not indulge our own humor at the expense of the 
reader's patience, nor forget that little children are not in 
every home, and that time, that pushes them on toward 
maturity, as well as death, which so often cuts them down 
in their blossom, is calling them away. Yet they never do 
go away; and childhood, whether it ripens into manhood 
or is stricken by death, lives transfigured, not blighted, in 
every loving heart. This view of the subject should not 
be slighted ; and it is important to have an eye upon the 
future influence of this spring time, when it becomes a 
cherished remembrance or may become a disheartening 
regret. We do not believe indeed in keeping such anxious 
watch for the future as to forget the present, nor in think- 
ing so much of our way of living as to lose the zest of life 
itself. We can be happy, however, in our own or our 
children's early years without any premature care or pre- 
cocious ingenuity. The method that best serves the 
present need best secures the future heritage, and the 
young life that opens most genially and healthfully under 
vernal'skies and breezes has best hope of summer blooms 
and autumn fruits. It will be found that the most pleas- 



30 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ing amusements, like spring buds, have a prospective utility, 
and the memory of a truly happy childhood is a treasure of 
manly strength and joy. It would be well if parents and 
kindred would bear in mind this charm of early association 
in their holiday gifts and festivities, and thus lay up for the 
little ones a store of enduring memorials and satisfactions, 
instead of wasting so much time and money upon flashy 
trifles that last but for a day or a month, and have no pros- 
pective worth or meaning. We need all such ministries 
to keep our own hearts fresh and young by the remem- 
brance of our early days; that time, instead of being the 
sepulchre, may be the garden of our youth, where the 
seeds of our young joys may spring up and bear blossom 
and fruit an hundred fold ; making us thus younger in feeling 
as we are older in years, and bidding us, in the words of 
the blessed Master, "enter the kingdom of heaven like a 
little child." 

It is not wise to forget, moreover, that, if children are 
taken away, there is comfort in other and nearer memorials 
than the marble and the grassy mound of the cemetery; 
and our home associations should be sacred with their 
memory, not only by our frequent regrets and constant 
love, but by all the hallowed festivals and keepsakes that 
keep the absent one from being lost to us, and so secure 
to the family all its treasures. We need not draw upon 
any art of rhetoric to tell the grief of a true parent over 
the coffin of a little child, for it seems like the drying up 
of the very fountain of life in which age renews its youth, 
and the charm and freshness of childhood return to us in 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 31 

our hardness and care. Yesterday a smile from that little 
face took fifty years from our shoulders, and we were i lerry 
as the little srniler, and ready to live over with glee the most 
youthful antics as if they were the play of our own spirits. 
Now that face is changed, and the burden of years falls 
back upon us with added weight. Who will wonder at the 
parents' grief when it is remembered how wonderfully the 
little sleeper blended the powers of memory and hope, and 
at once revived the old days and cheered on the new. 
The torch thus extinguished leaves to darkness the field of 
remembrance and expectation, and no wonder that anguish 
at the bereavement sometimes verges upon despair. But 
good Providence brings the balm out of the ground 
watered with tears ; and of all human sorrows none are so 
blessed and uplifting as that which draws parents upward 
toward the little ones whose angels do behold the face of 
our Father in heaven. Do the best that we can for them 
while they are with us, and whether they go or stay their 
blessing is still ours, and their trust, and affection, and joy 
are treasures evermore. 

Play on, then, little friends, and be loving and true while 
you play. We work the more bravely at sight of your joy, 
and your work will be better if your play opens your 
hearts, and braces your limbs, and quickens your spirit for 
the trials and the joys to come. We were little boys our- 
selves once, and with all our grave lessons we mean to be 
old boys still. 



II. 

Our Old Pew. 



B2 



OUR OLD PEW. 35 



OUR OLD PEW. 

TT7"E are quite well aware that there is nothing especially 
' attractive to this fast and not very reverential gener- 
ation in the title of this article ; and while the merits of 
"The Old Arm-chair," and "The Old Oaken Bucket," 
"The Old Mill," "The Old School-house," and almost 
every ancient thing on earth, have been said or sung to 
not indifferent ears, so far as our observation goes, we are 
the first to say a word for the Old Pew. If our saying 
may turn out to be as much a sermon as a song, we hope 
to win a friendly ear from the large and growing class of 
our readers who cherish time-hallowed remembrances 
sacredly, and believe that home-life gains in geniality as 
well as in elevation by coming under wholesome church 
influence. 

I have had it (here a while we use the first person) in 
•mind for some time to write an essay upon the Church 
view of the Family, and my thoughts take the present 
shape froni a visit to my native home and the old church 
of our childhood. I always go home in mid-summer, and 
it is pleasant to make a double use of the college holidays 



36 AMERICAN LIFE. 

by taking the old homestead on the way to the Cambridge 
Commencement. I have just returned from that annual 
visit, and I found the workmen busy with dismantling the 
interior of our church, or " meeting-house," as the people 
there usually style their places of worship. I was glad 
to be in time to see the building "before the work of 
destruction had gone far, and sit a moment in the old pew 
before its homely pine and mahogany were torn away to 
make room for more modern accommodations. The mo- 
ment spoke for a whole lifetime, and recalled vividly the 
forty years that have passed since I first took my seat there, 
and looked up with childish reverence to the lofty ceiling 
and the solemn preacher. The ceiling does not, indeed, 
seem to me very lofty now, yet it lifts my thoughts higher 
than any vaulted cathedral ; and the preacher, although he 
now wears the square cap of an academic president and 
rules over the oldest university in the land, is not as awful 
as he was then ; and it was very pleasant as I sat, last 
week, at his table, and enjoyed his sparkling wit and sen- 
tentious wisdom, to be assured that the familarity which 
abates awe need not bring contempt, and that true rever- 
ence may grow with friendly fellowship. I can honestly 
say that the best influence over my boyish days came from 
that pulpit ; and although the preacher was a deep thinker, 
and I could not understand all of his sermons, there was' 
something in every sermon that came home to me, and 
even when I could not understand the thought, I under- 
derstood the manner, being perfectly convinced by the 
tone and gesture that he meant to do us good, and the 



OUR OLD PEW. O? 

spirit and the trust were with him. Like other men, I, of 
course have had my temptations, and I can truly say that, 
whenever enticed to venture upon any wrong course, no 
power has been stronger with me for the right than the 
remembrance of those wholesome counsels of our old min- 
ister, and that searching question, " How shall I look him 
in the face if I waste my time and opportunities and make 
a fool or reprobate of myself? " He is now no longer in 
that pulpit, except on some occasional visit, and the forty 
years that have gone over his head since I first saw him 
there have changed him from a somewhat fiery young pole- 
mic to a calm and almost judicial sage, yet no man has 
better kept the promise of his prime, and his ripe autumn 
fruit is the fitting harvest of his green and vigorous spring- 
time. One thing it is very cheerful to note in him as the 
sear and yellow leaf comes on; he is merrier as well as 
wiser, and perhaps his genial temper is as good a moral now 
as was his close and vehement preaching forty years ago. 

The aspect of the empty pews, as they waited the blow, 
of the hammer (not the auctioneer's), was not as cheering 
as that of the pulpit; for forty years make sad havoc in a 
congregation, and as memory called the roll of the old 
familiar faces no answer came, in many cases, except from 
. the tombstones that record their names. Death had made 
especial ravages among the solid men who sat in the middle 
alley, or what in New England is called the "Broad Aisle." 
I used to look at them with wonder not unmixed with rev- 
erence, for they were mostly the rich men of the town 
whose stately houses stood in decided contrast with our 



38 AMERICAN LIFE. 

simpler homes. They have passed away, and for the most 
part their wealth has gone with them, and strangers live in 
their houses and occupy their pews. An instructive essay 
might be written upon the lives and fortunes of some 
twenty of those solid men, and the lesson might throw 
some light upon the nature and permanence of our Ameri- 
can prosperity. Other faces, however, than theirs dwell 
most pleasantly in my remembrance, and our old church 
had its notable persons who have made their mark upon 
the thought and business of our day. The navy officers 
worshiped usually with us, and many a weather-beaten 
head bowed down there in reverence that had braved the 
battle and the breeze in -perils that have become part of our 
national history. There, too, for years, sat the noted orator 
and statesman of our vicinity, .since more than ever a 
national name, probably the most regular worshiper in 
the whole congregation, present morning and afternoon, 
and at the usual services and communion, the most success- 
ful man of his time, yet always bearing the mark of care 
upon his brow, and apparently needing no grave warnings 
of the altar to convince him that no crown is without its 
cross, and he who wins fame and fortune can not have them 
without paying a high price. Edward Everett has died an 
honored patriot, and as an old neighbor, I was glad to say 
my humble word in New York in his memory. Other men 
sat there, too, who have won a good name of the public in 
literature, science, and the learned professions. I will con- 
fess, however, that there are some associations with the 
worshipers that impressed me quite as much as the view of 



OUR OLD PEW. 39 

captains and senators and their peers. The school-boy and 
collegian, as he sat in the family pew, joined none the less 
fervently in the worship from being aware that gentler eyes 
than his were turned toward the pulpit, although sometimes, 
perhaps, an occasional glance toward this or that fair school- 
mate might have mingled with the love that is divine some 
little alloy of earthly feeling. He remembers to this day 
two faces that strongly impressed his boyhood, and gave a 
tinge of romance to the old sanctuary. Not far in front of 
his pew sat a child, a little girl with a rivulet of brown 
ringlets falling down her shoulders, and as she grew in 
stature, she became, even before he made her acquaintance, 
a kind of fairy of the boy's day-dreams. Another lassie, 
of smaller stature and more merry laugh, and with a hand 
small and dimpled enough to win a sculptor's eye, some- 
times entered into his Sunday thoughts and made it pleas- 
anter to go to church. Those two children, the picturesque 
Laura and the statuesque Hebe, are matrons now, each 
with her due share of offspring. Was it a merciful Provi- 
dence that their various attractions so kept the student os- 
cillating between them as to save him from so falling in 
love as to spoil his studies, or from venturing upon some 
juvenile declaration that might have brought a dishearten- 
ing refusal from grave parents, and made him a laughing- 
stock among the young people ? These, perhaps, may seem 
to be frivolous associations with a sacred place ; yet there 
is a spirit of chivalry natural to boyhood which readily con- 
nects womanly grace with religion, and does not prevent a 
romantic nature from saying the prayers heartily with a lit- 



40 AMERICAN LIFE. 

tie lovely companions!^ in the sanctuary. Our Puritan 
churches are so barren in ornament, without a picture or 
insciiption to vary their blank walls, that the human heart 
is compelled to be its own artist, and set up a Madonna or 
two of its own from pictured fancies if not upon glass or 
canvas. 

After all these somewhat playful reminiscences, we confess 
that the old edifice abounds in serious suggestions ; and be- 
fore we surrendered the old pew to destruction, we were 
compelled to note a few thoughts upon the welfare of the 
family as connected with the church and its ministry. 
The first thought that forces itself upon us comes from the 
importance of duly considering the individual characteris- 
tics of the members of the family in religious education, 
and of not forgetting, in our wholesale methods of training 
the young, that each girl or boy is an original from the 
hand of God, and, as such, demands, in some respects, a 
peculiar nurture. The whole family, indeed, is fenced up 
within that boarded enclosure, as within the partitions of a 
sheep-pen, in a way that tends to hide all marked charac- 
teristics in a prosaic uniformity. Yet even the Sunday seat 
with the Sunday face in the gravest sanctuary does not 
wholly tone down to one dead level every salient point of 
character. The soberest members of the family, who are 
intent upon prayer and Bible and sermon with all their 
hearts and eyes, will, by their way of sitting or holding 
their head or book, or their cast of countenance, betray 
their idiosyncrasy; and the imperious shake of the solemn 
father's head, or the anxious glance of the careful mother's 






OUR OLD PEW. 41 

eye, will be, to a shrewd observer, a great revelation of 
character. Then the children, with their volatile spirits, 
can not fail to show what is in them, and any man who has 
a keen eye to human nature need not take his Shakspeare 
or Lord Bacon to church with him to open to him the se- 
crets, of the human breast and prove the force of nature 
over circumstances. A half dozen girls and boys are a 
compend of the world's history, and in the hints of pride 
or vanity, sensitiveness or resolution, quietude or restless- 
ness, listlessness or anxiety, a sagacious looker-on may de- 
tect qualities that have made the earth's leading characters 
and their subjects or disciples. 

We must confess that this fact of individuality of nature 
and experience is not sufficiently considered in our churches, 
and too often the whole congregation is preached to as if 
all were exactly alike, and were to be turned to religion 
upon a kind of turning-lathe very much after the same pat- 
tern. Not only in the tone and direction of the services, 
but in the very order of the services, there is too little re- 
gard to individual dispositions and faculties. As a general 
rule, we are convinced that young people are surfeited with 
mere preaching, and that the ear and understanding are 
tasked to an extent wholly out of proportion with the eye, 
the fancy, and the affections. Our churches run too much 
to sermons, and to prayers that are often but sermons aimed 
toward heaven. There is too little to see and feel — too 
little cheering music, social fellowship, and ritual symbol. 
We remember what a godsend it was to us in our boyhood 
when a baby was baptized, and the minister, after the sing- 



42 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ing of a hymn, came down from the pulpit, and, in the gaze 
of the great company who stood on tip-toe to Jbe spectators 
as well as listeners, named the child, after the Divine com- 
mission, in a way that made us feel, better than we could 
then explain, that a little baby is a sacred and mysterious 
gift, and under that frail mantle of clay rests that royal 
humanity which the Father made, and the Son redeemed, 
and the Spirit sanctified. There was very little else in our 
church to vary the usual tenor of worship. Never a mar- 
riage, with its festive sanctity, nor a funeral, with its solemn 
shadow — never a Christmas wreath nor an Easter flower, 
to bring into the sanctuary some sacred sense of the rich 
fullness of human life and the wide range of God's 
providence. What poetry we had in connection with 
religion came to us in spite of the church, and even 
our noble minister, with all his gifts of wisdom, his iron 
logic and pointed moral and often eloquent appeal, 
seldom dealt in pathos or ideality, seldom presented 
church seasons in a way to attract young hearts. We need- 
ed some direct appeal from him to bring us to ourselves and 
to God. The old catechising in a manner filled the want, and 
a few words from his revered lips to each of us as we met 
in the church on Wednesday afternoons were treasured up 
for years, and are riches to us now. Yet there was gener- 
ally little contact between the pastor and the children of 
the flock — little of that personal counsel which, in our 
Protestant faith, may have all the unction and point of the 
old confessional without its tyranny. Many a youth suffers 
sadly from not having his own religious difficulties fitly met, 



OUR OLD PEW. 43 

and his own religions sensibilities and powers brought out. 
He finds himself sternly questioned by his own reason, and 
strongly tempted by his own heart and the world. He 
finds himself unable to think and feel as others seem to do, 
and often is in danger of giving over his soul to despair as 
an utter reprobate, simply because he is made in a peculiar 
mould, and must take to religion, if at all, as to every 
thing else, in his own way, and not in another person's way. 
He is, perhaps, of a sober, ethical disposition like St. 
James, and wonders that he has not Peter's fiery zeal or 
Paul's impassioned faith. A true and timely word might 
set him right, and instead of vainly trying to make of him 
somebody else, it might help him be himself among the 
other children of God. There is no end to the illustrations 
of the principle in question, and a new day will come to 
our churches when it is duly remembered that in the same 
pew vast diversity of gifts exists, and we show reverence 
for the Creator by giving fair play and full nurture to every 
soul that He has called into being. Perhaps every thought- 
ful reader can remember cases of promising youths who have 
been allowed to drift loose from all serious convictions, if not 
from good morals, in the absence of such personal care for 
their welfare. Surely it is a somewhat startling thought, 
a's we look upon the tenants of a church-pew, to reflect how 
many various dispositions are there represented, and what 
care is needed to give each nature its true development. 

Study any family group, moreover, not only as made up 
of separate persons, but as forming one household. Gener- 
ally, a looker-on may discern a family likeness in the 



44 AMERICAN LIFE. • 

whole company of children ; and even the father and 
. mother, without any unity of blood, assimilate somewhat 
in appearance by constant association. The intention of 
Providence evidently is that the family shall be one, not 
only by living under the same roof, but by breathing the 
same spirit and furthering the same plans of life. It is 
equally evident that mere blood is not enough to make 
them one, and many of the most terrible quarrels that stain 
history and convulse society have been between blood re- 
lations. Mere unity of blood may sometimes create discord ; 
for where, for example, a certain high temper runs in the 
veins, the inmates of a household may be tempted to quar- 
rel even because they are so much alike. But without 
such high tempers, and in a family with good average 
dispositions, there is sure to be sufficient variety of traits 
to excite uncomfortable feelings, if all are not induced to 
agree upon some princij^le of harmony above personal 
notions and caprices. Hence the blessing of a strong and 
wholesome religious influence over the household, and the 
need of enlarging and elevating home life by church de- 
votion and fellowship. It is by no means easy for relatives, 
even for brothers and sisters, to agree when they wish to 
do so by mere good nature, much less by a descent 
etiquette that disguises chagrin, or by a compromise of 
manner that tolerates failings for the sake of having its 
own failings tolerated in turn. It is a great art to solder 
different metals together ; and without the proper amalgam, 
the more they are brought together the more they clatter 
and chafe. The higher the materials to be united, the 



OUR OLD PEW. 45 

higher must be the element of union ; and human souls can 
come together only in the atmosphere of love, that is the 
soul's true life and Heaven's best gift. Hence the blessing 
of a sound, hearty religion in drawing the family together ; 
and the pew, whose door opens to welcome them from the 
household, should dismiss them to their homes all the 
warmer in domestic affection from being more fervent as 
children of God. It would be well, it seems to us, if 
preaching had an eye more to this end, and our clergy 
would remember that every Sunday, in the hundred or two 
families jn'esent in the pews, there must be not a few cases 
where the first principles of brotherly and filial and paren- 
tal love need to be inculcated. Sometimes the tenderest 
appeals to home feeling touch the very natures that seem 
least open to gentle emotions ; and we believe that gener- 
ally, whenever the preacher says a cordial and unaffected 
word, especially for good mothers, the sternest looking 
men in the audience, with not a few of the more re- 
fractory boys, will be found inclining to the melting mood. 

It may startle sentimental ears to be told that respect- 
able families are not always by mere force of nature 
harmonious, and need the benefit of church and clergy to 
bring them into tune. But we are ready to go even 
further, and to maintain that the very families that have 
within themselves the largest elements of happiness are 
very apt to disagree unless they are harmonized by a spirit 
above their own self-wills. True harmony is the agree- 
ment of differences, and where the differences seem at first 
to be the greatest, as in a concert of various voices and 



46 AMERICAN LIFE. 

instruments, the harmony may be the most complete. 
What a fearful din arises when first the drum and trumpet 
the flute and fife, the harp and horn lift up their miscella- 
neous voices ; and the novice might well think that Bedlam 
had broke loose or Babel had come again. But listen 
again, and the performers no longer following a chance 
caprice follow the notes of the great master, and the full 
burst of harmony speaks the triumphant reconciliation of 
that host of differences, the very best passages in the whole 
piece harmonizing the most opposite instruments and per- 
haps making the silver flute keep friendly company with 
the brazen drum, or the quivering harp give grateful relief 
to the sonorous trumpet. Human characters are more 
various than metal or strings or reed, and require a finer 
touch and higher mastery to bring them into tune. We 
are not, of course, speaking now of positive quarrels in a 
family ; for hard words imply low breeding, and rude blows 
degrade households below the level of those for whom we 
write. Yet there may be a whole world of discomfort 
without sinking into such degradation, and family jars may 
rob life of its best chami, even when they do not break 
the visible order of the family, or go beyond hard thoughts 
and moody tempers. The trouble may come from the 
over-sensitive who feel acutely every cold look or 
harsh word, or from the strong will that resents every re- 
straint as an imposition; and often these two traits of 
character are found to organize a standing disagreement in 
a family, when delicate nerves on one side, and hot blood 
on the other, live in a state of chronic warfare, like the 



OUR OLD PEW. 47 

tearful rain and flashing lightning of a thunder-shower. 
We do not believe, indeed, that temperaments can be 
changed ; but we do know that they can be regulated, and 
at the very point where disagreement most readily com- 
mences there the true harmony should begin ; for just at 
that point the necessity of self-control and self-sacrifice 
most clearly appears, and when these set up their cross of 
self-consecration the crown of peace will not long be with- 
held. We suppose that the happiest couple need in some 
way to find out this secret for themselves and their chil- 
ren, and that no families have so deep and enduring 
enjoyment as those who learn in due season that human 
tempers and impulses are very mutable and erring, and 
must be brought under the influence of a superior author- 
ity and spirit. We believe that the simplest lessons of the 
Gospel, if heeded in due time, might prevent many a 
family quarrel ; and that, instead of an angry divorce, a 
deeper harmony would unite many a sensitive wife and 
irritable husband, if the sense of infirmity or wrong had 
only brought humility before God's mercy-seat instead of 
multiplying scandal in the world's mischievous ear. 

Generally the feminine part of the household is more 
under the influence of the pew - than the masculine part, 
and is especially better for the influence, when true wisdom 
guides the pulpit and good sense goes with the sentiment 
of the ministrations. Sometimes this very subject divides 
the household, and. the husband and wife differ decidedly 
as to the merits of the preacher or the worth of the sanc- 
tuary. Most frequently the skeptical element in the family 



48 AMERICAN LIFE. 

is on the masculine side ; and where actual skepticism does 
not exist, a certain reserve, or indifference, almost as much 
nullifies the influence of the Church. How to interest the 
men and boys is a great question of our time, and one 
which is answered in various ways, and most conspicuously 
by two classes of preachers — the sensation orators, who 
thin the theatre and caucus by their more inebriating ap- 
j)eals, and the rough-and-ready school of divines, who seem 
to carry the boxing-gloves and foils into the pulpit, and 
preach bodily exercise as well as godliness, and recommend 
a very literal style of knock-down arguments. These may 
do well in their place ; and it takes all sorts of people to 
make up a church as a world. But, for ourselves, we have 
far more hope of interesting indifferent men, and even re- 
claiming refractory boys, by a consistent, calm, and resolute 
ministry, that urges a Divine authority with devout grace, 
and aims to nurture the people within God's kingdom in 
the atmosphere of love, and upon the living bread and 
waters .of the • Father's household, than by any sensation 
rhetoric or rough-and-ready pugnacity. The great question 
to be settled is, whether life is to be under a divine law or 
not ; and if under a divine law, whether under the divine 
love also. Now, surely the ministry that mingles true dig- 
nity with sympathy and unction is most likely to secure 
this end, and urge an authority that is gracious and a grace 
that is authoritative. If a good share of solid sense and 
clear logic is united with such a ministry, all the better for 
its power over the masculine part of the family in bringing 
them to true reverence for sacred things, and into whole- 



OUR OLD PEW. 49 

some harmony with' the generally devout temper of the 
women of the household. 

There is a great deal of undeveloped talent in the family ; 
and it is a startling question to ask on Sunday, as we look 
about upon the congregation, what would be the career 
of these girls and boys if their destinies were to chime 
exactly with their powers, and they were to become the 
most and the best that they can become ? But talent is 
not by any means confined to the taste, intellect, or imagi- 
nation, but embraces every capacity and faculty of useful- 
ness and enjoyment, or of receiving and imparting good. 
How much more startling becomes the question when ex- 
tended to all those varieties of sensibility and affection 
and conscience and thought and purpose in which life has 
its highest worth and peace ! Every Sunday how various 
and many are the keys touched by the preacher's word, and 
what power has a true master in bringing out the true 
tones from that many- voiced humanity ! Hence the need 
— which we urge as our final leading thought — the need 
of cherishing a true catholicity in church, and of thus 
making the family feel not only that they are individuals 
and also one household, but that they belong to a universal 
empire, a spiritual kingdom, and are to cherish its divine 
citizenship in the due use of their powers and capacities. 
They will be all the more a family by recognizing their 
true union with the universal family ; just as each city is 
more a ciiy by knowing its due relation to the State and 
nation. Without going into any ambitious discussions of 
the true breadth of human culture, and the value of a cos- 

n 



50 AMERICAN LIFE. 

mopolitan spirit in society and the world, we are content 
now with maintaining that each household needs a person- 
al sense of the place of each member under the Divine 
government to give to each character its just charm and 
power. The round of a single Sunday's service, i^re than 
any week-day's schooling or any ball-room's elegances, 
should teach a true humanity and test a true grace and 
dignity. In fact, what great aspect of History, Providence, 
or Human Life is there which is not, in some way, present- 
ed or suggested by the Scriptures, hymns, prayers, and 
meditations of a well-conducted season of worship ? The 
good old Bible itself is a great text-book of humanity as 
well as of God, and gathers within its lids the thoughts and 
experiences not only of famous saints and sages but of 
nations and ages. It unites with the acts of worship and 
instruction to win the assembly to a sense of citizenship 
beyond that of any one cast or family, and to ennoble daily 
life by the dignity of a divine birthright. The household 
needs this influence ; for when left to itself it tends to a 
narrow clannishness, or belittling familism, that impover- 
ishes the home, by making it the all-in-all, as much as he 
impoverishes his estate who persists in shutting himself up 
within its bounds by walls that shut out the steps of men, 
and the range of mountain and river, and the light of 
heaven itself. The true influence, when fitly used, not only 
enlarges the views of the family, by due knowledge of the 
broad sweep of the Divine plans and the rich dj^ersity of 
Providential characters, but it brings each mind to its true 
bearings by presenting the essential ideas and motives 



OUR OLD PEW. 51 

which every human soul must accept if it would be loyal 
to its birthright. Thus comes that sacred filial sense and 
purpose which give the true aim and power, and guide and 
strenghten all human relations by the master-spirit of a 
truly filial heart. The human father is a better father from 
looking to the Divine Parent ; and the son is a better son by 
leaning upon that infinite love ; and the friend and the brother 
can give a richer sympathy by exalting personal affection 
into a spiritual fellowship, and ennobling private feeling by 
universal charity. So great is the grace and power of such 
a high standard over the family that camps and courts imi- 
tate its loftiness, and in a certain way — imperfect, indeed 
— the tone of military honor and social gentility is always 
bearing witness of the claims of the higher worth over the 
lower interest, and measuring life more by the quality of its 
spirit than by the quantity of its goods. The highest quality 
attaches to the family that is most loyal to the highest good, 
or has the clearest sense and the bravest service of the divine 
kingdom. Every true home must have something of this 
quality ; and the lowliest cottage need ask no honors from 
courts or camps, fame or fashion, when its sons and daughters 
know and serve the Supreme Power and the Eternal Love. 
That family may fill a humble seat in the visible church, 
but it is higher than any dome or spire* that pierces the 
sky ; for God's true children are as high as his own mercy- 
seat, and their Sunday faces, in their reverence and joy, 
show forth something of the glory and blessedness there 
enthroned. 
It may seem to some that we are dealing in overstrained 



52 AMERICAN LIFE. 

phrases, and that we have mounted from the old pew to 
the pulpit, and caught a little of the cant and exaggeration 
sometimes found there. But we are, we trust, quite in a com- 
mon-sense vein, and can say in all soberness that every man 
who can remember a single true Sunday's devotion in 
church will verify what has been said, and allow that, in 
our best hours there, we have a certain sense of belonging 
to the great spiritual family, and being cheered by the 
Universal Light and animated by the Universal Will. It 
is most touching and impressive to look upon the assembly 
where all feel this experience, and men and women of all 
callings, conditions, and culture are drawn together not 
only by the common reverence for the sanctuary shown in 
their common carefulness of garb and manner, but by the 
great and blessed conviction that they meet together in one 
Father, and hear His voice and feel his breath in the One 
Word and Spirit. 

We have written in a somewhat old-fashioned strain, 
although by no means belonging to the class of croakers 
and fogies. We believe in the old Gospel as the best news, 
and hold to every good institution that dispenses its living 
waters. By this time we suppose that our old pew has 
been made into fire-wood, and thus returned some of the 
light and warmth which it has been receiving for forty years 
from the altar. We doubt not that the new and more grace- 
ful structure that is taking its place will, in due time, have 
a story of its own to tell, and we trust that it may have a bet- 
ter story-teller than we. What forty years to come will bring 
to pass in that or in any sanctuary no sober man will venture 



OUR OLD PEW. 53 

to predict ; and nothing would better illustrate the mutabil- 
ity of human life and fortune than an exact picture of the 
old church, with its people, when first opened for worship, 
in 1818, and now when it is to be transformed. In many 
of those pews then sat young couples just beginning the 
world together, more than one fair wife bringing a bride's 
garment and hopes to the sanctuary. Those intervening 
years have brought with the new and able preacher new 
cares as well as new blessings to those seats, and the space 
between the young husband and wife has been occupied by 
new faces, with eyes brightening and opening with growing 
intelligence; and sometimes saddened by vacant spaces 
that speak of eyes that have been closed in death. How 
instructive and impressive would be a series of photographs 
of the family groups in any of those pews at intervals of 
every five or ten years, and showing the occupants in their 
various stages of life and culture ! A keen eye must see 
in the boy of forty years ago the features and character of 
the man now fifty ; yet the keenest eye must allow its ina- 
bility to play the prophet of the next forty years, and turn 
with grateful heart from the old pew to the old pulpit and 
the old Bible, happy to be assured that we are in better 
hands than our own, and we are governed by One whose 
ways are not as our ways, and whose thoughts not as our 
thoughts. 

Farewell, old Church ! We can not forget your seats 
and walls without forgetting the best gifts that we have 
ever had from God and man. 



III. 

School Influences. 



SCHOOL INFLUENCES. 57 



. SCHOOL INFLUENCES. 

TT7E have but begun to see the power of our public 
schools. Much as we are in the habit of glorify- 
ing them, even at the expense of household nurture and 
church life. We have looked upon them chiefly as sources 
of knowledge and have some times forgotten their power 
over manners and morals, associations and habits. I will 
not here enter into any discipline of the excellencies and 
defects of our American Public School system, but will be 
content to bear cheerful testimony to its vast and in the 
main, good influences. The school books of America are a 
noble fruit of the institutions of our age and undeniable 
proof of the hand of God in history ; our thousands and 
tens of thousands of teachers are as estimable and effective 
a body of fhen and women as have ever given themselves 
to the task of popular education, and to them in no small 
measure we are to ascribe the flaming patriotism and loyal 
enthusiasm that has made of our school houses mighty for- 
tresses, and trained the girls and boys of the nation in de- 
votion to the life of the nation, and the birthright of the 
soul as the gift of God to us and our fathers, as well as to 
the new generations. 

C2 



58 AMERICAN LIFE. 

I have known our schools in all their phases, and seen 
their defects and virtues for over forty years, first as a 
school-boy, then as a committee man, and of late years as 
friend and visitor. Here in New York city, our professional 
men, especially our clergy, are not so closely connected 
with our schools, as is usual in New England. There the 
clergy are generally the leading members of the commit- 
tees, whilst here political preferences are apt to decide the 
choice, and our school officers are drawn largely from the 
dominant class of politicians. The result is that some 
times the visiting officer knows less than the scholars he 
examines, and finds himself put down by the bright boys 
that he undertakes to question and correct. Perhaps more 
frequently the incompetent officials are more modest and 
entrust their charge to abler hands than their own, and 
generally invite men of culture to do the speaking. Gen- 
erally, however, the exhibitions and receptions, which in 
many respects are most charming, lack the oversight of an 
experienced and sagacious head, and are defective in unity 
and point, and often long and wearisome in the extreme to 
the heated and crowded assembly. 

In point of discipline, my impression is th^ our New 
York schools are excellent, and great good feeling cheers 
and elevates the deference of scholar to teacher. In some 
cases even the worship that tends to be formal becomes 
affectionate, gentle and even beautiful, and some of our 
teachers carry with them a really pastoral unction into 
their work. It is pleasant to see that so many of them 
stand the wear and tear of their calling so well, and live 



SCHOOL INFLUENCES. 59 

and thrive in every way in its round. I have known no 
more cheering occasion than the quarter century festival 
given in one of our girls' schools last year to one of our 
best and most experienced instructors, a lady whose worth 
as a Mend and parishoner, I had known for years. It was 
a perfect ovation of music and flowers, congratulation and 
love. Handsome gifts were presented in behalf of her 
pupils of the whole twenty-five years, who were there in 
person from playful little school girls up to blooming ma- 
trons. God's blessing on her and her calling. If our rich 
parishoners had been as liberal as she and her sainted sister 
to appeals from the pulpit, our pastoral characters would 
have been at least tenfold increased. Instead of dwelling 
further upon our schools here, I will take the liberty to lay 
before our readers some hearty words that were said 
after ending a long term of years as a school committee 
man in New England, and on speaking for the first time at 
a festive assembly in the great and genial metropolis. 

These remarks are published the less reluctantly as copies 
of them have been asked for and were not to be had, and 
they have some little historical interest that is not limited 
to the future of the sons of New England. 



It was one of the facetious sayings of Sidney Smith, 
that if a man were about to review a book, he had better 
not read it, for fear of prejudicing his mind as to its merits, 
and because, moreover, a reviewer may write down many 



60 AMERICAN LIFE. 

brilliant generalities that might be at once extinguished by 
the author's prosaic facts. Now, Mr. President, I am un- 
fortunate that I cannot respond to your call from so favor- 
able a point of view, for I have read the common schools 
of New England again and again. What can a plodding 
worker, who has been these twelve years a Yankee school 
committee man, say, in this brilliant assembly, from an ex- 
perience so prosaic and upon a topic so familiar ? I have 
been less than three months released from that long cam- 
paign of service among the young infantry of New Eng- 
land, and the words of your excellent sentiment seem to 
send me back to the committee room, or upon the old round 
of visitation from district to district. 

Shall I quote from my reminisences of school administra- 
tion ? The whole evening would be quite as little adequate 
for the task as would your patience. How vividly those 
years come back now, with their remembrances of hundreds 
of teachers examined and found capable or incapable; of 
thousands of scholars at their lessons, visited now at a ven- 
ture, as they happened to be in their every day dress and 
demeanor, and now, at the great exhibition, with their faces 
so bright, and their dress so nice; little boys, great boys, little 
girls, great girls, all looking like a garden bed of pleasant 
flowers after a June shower. I could tell you of the oceans of 
school books submitted to our sage inspection, all warranted 
to be the best ever written and promising to work all kinds 
of wonders, from the teaching a new way to unlock the 
mystery of A B C, to the condensing all physics or meta- 
physics, nay, to packing the whole cyclopedia of knowledge 



SCHOOL INFLUENCES. 61 

within two pretty covers. I could tell you of regular meet- 
ings of the committee for ordinary business, and extra 
meetings for extraordinary occasions; such occasions, for 
example, as presented by the inhabitants of some district, 
who have been so ignorant of the treatise of Malthus, on 
population, as to demand an enlargement of the school 
house, or by the complaints of some injured mother who 
declares that her son, who has a perfect disposition, has 
been whipped black and blue for nothing ; or, again, the 
summons comes to us to consider what we shall do to sup- 
ply the place of our best high school master, who has ac- 
cepted a professorship in a western college, or to find success- 
ors to three of our most interesting school mistresses, who, 
(alas, most frequent cause of defection !) have decided to 
accept the degree of M. R. S., and transfer their gift of 
teaching to another sphere. 

But, Mr. President, I will spare your patience and keep 
to myself the chronicles of those years of various, and, I 
may add, pleasant service — merely adding, that I know 
the schools of New England well, and that they are in all 
respects improving under the faithful labors of zealous 
friends, faithful teachers, and the guardianship of an ele- 
vated public opinion, which identifies their interest with the 
public honor, I will say a few words of more serious 
bearing. 

Sir, from my soul, I honor the common school. I honor 
it in its humble origin, and in its majestic triumph. Do we 
look for its origin ; look to the common sense of our fath- 
ers, and you find it at once. The common school, as we 



62 AMERICAN LIFE. 

understand it — the school not maintained by charity, but 
established and supported by the people themselves, for the 
good of their own children — is the growth of the common 
sentiment of the Pilgrims in their peculiar position? 

To one judging of the future with a superficial mind, it 
might have seemed as if, to the cavaliers of Virginia rather 
than to the puritans of Massachusetts, this palm of honor 
would have been given. As early as 1621, a free school 
was established in the Old Dominion, and priestly preroga- 
tive and chartered wealth presided over its beginning. 
But this plant struck no root into the soil. It was only an 
exotic, and soon languished away. It was not the growth 
of the colonists themselves, but a charity institution im- 
ported from abroad. The master and usher were endowed 
with one thousand acres of land and the privilege of five ser- 
vants. Yet all was in vain. Not such was the case with the 
Puritan educational movement, whose first public express- 
ion seems to have been embodied in the vote of a Boston 
town meeting in 1635, to the effect that " our brother Phil- 
emon Pormont shall be entreated to become school master 
for the teaching and nurturing of youth among us." Soon 
the town vote became the colonial law of 1647 ; every fifty 
householders were to support a school for teaching and 
writing, whilst every hundred householders were to provide 
a master capable of preparing youth for college. 

There is no mystery about this noble movement. It was 
the most obvious expression of the mind of the fore- 
fathers. They believed in the God of the Bible, and 
wished their children to learn his attributes and will from 



SCHOOL INFLUENCES. 63 

his own word. They had sacrificed every thing for civil 
and religious liberty, and were determined that their 
children should be able to understand their duties to the 
state. They were dependent upon their own labor, and 
were resolved that their children should be taught the 
best way to earn an honest living. So the school-house 
arose. Religion and liberty gave the rude edifice a 
consecration beyond that of pontiffs and pageants. Hard 
handed industry stood by and gave its blessing. New 
England with her stern face as of stone looked into the 
windows of the school-room, and followed with her gaze 
the groups of boys and girls to their humble homes. Trans- 
lated into words, her expression was this : " Learn, children, 
learn to know and to do the right, learn to work well, and 
my hard face shall smile upon you as sweetly as the 
Blessed Mother of old smiled upon her child in his man- 
ger-cradle." Sons of New England, has not our mother 
fulfilled her promise ? Has she not smiled upon all indus- 
try? Who will not say that her vernal villages and 
thriving towns are fairer to our eye than rich prairies 
that ask no toil, or tropical islands that know no winter's 
cold? Mighty this great stimulus necessity, this need of 
earning our bread. How it gives an appetite for knowl- 
edge and an aim to life ! Nay, what is there in the world 
that will drive the nonsense out of a boy or man sooner 
than the being obliged to get his own living for himself? 
Marvellous the power that industry has found in the com- 
mon school. 

See this power in" its actual results. Consider the 



64 • AMERICAN LIFE. 

triumphs of the school. My eloquent friend has spoken of 
the triumph of our arms, and of the present commanding 
attitude of our nation before the world. I will not gainsay 
his strong words nor deny altogether, the need and the 
worth of our brave armies and navies. But, surely, theirs 
are not the best triumphs — theirs are not the mightiest 
weapons. The school-master and school-mistress com- 
mand a stronger host than were ever led by the stout- 
hearted Taylor or the brave and unflinching Scott. The 
school-boy's satchel has better ammunition than the 
soldier's cartridge box. The glance of the school-girl's eye 
has more to do with the progress of civilization than the 
gleam of the bayonet, or the flash of the musket. 

I am making no empty rhetorical flourish in celebrating 
the power of the common school. Who shall set a limit to 
its triumphs ? Already it has gone to the extreme borders of 
our nation, and invaded regions that are to add new gran- 
deur to our peaceful empire. The ring of the back- woods- 
man's axe is more than the sound of bugle and drum, the 
reveille of our advancing hosts, and the chimney of the 
distant school, wherever its smoke is seen, tells that the best 
of forts has been planted on our borders. The principle of 
popular education goes with the New Englander wher- 
ever he goes. It has doubled Cape Horn with him in his 
tempestuous voyage ; it has climbed the Rocky Mountains 
with him in his perilous march ; it has stood by his side as 
he has cast his vote as a legislator, in giving law to the 
New El Dorado of the west. 

O sir, my Yankee blood was stirred within me, as I read 



SCHOOL INFLUENCES. 65 

that constitution of California. Hear it, eulogists of the 
Pizarros — hear it, admirers of conquerers whose greed for 
gold makes them reckless of blood and mindful only of 
gain and lust. The cursed passion has not blinded the eyes 
of our people even amid the dangers and distractions of 
their unsettled home, to the worth of that which is better 
than silver or gold. Education is made a corner stone 
of the new state, and broad lands are secured for ever 
for its support. The day will be when new triumphs shall 
confirm and consolidate this peaceful agency — nay, when 
a cordon of these forts of knowledge shall connect East- 
port with San Francisco, Wisconsin with Cape Sable. 

But triumph is not measured by extension so much as by 
elevation. The-school has elevated its standard as well as ex- 
tended its domain. If the trumpet of the Archangel could 
recall the dead, and some particles of the dust that lie buried 
on old Copp's Hill, or in the Granary Burying Ground, 
could be re-animated with intelligence, and the spirit of 
Philemon Pormont, the famous Boston school-master of 
two centuries since, could look around upon us, there would 
be some things in his own line that would be well worth 
his inspection. I care not what place we choose for the 
supposed visit, whether it be the noble institutions of New 
York, or Providence, or Boston. 

But to carry out the idea better, let it be his own Bos- 
ton. Enter now this handsome building, a primary school- 
house. Its architecture is something of an improvement 
on this model before us, (pointing to the red school-house 
in sugar upon the table,) as much care being taken to ad- 



66 AMERICAN LIFE. 

mit fresh air now, as was of old taken to keep out the 
rude winds of winter. Yet all honor be given to the old 
architecture of our fathers — honor beyond that rendered to 
any of the structures in which the Pugins or Barrys of our day 
servilely imitate and pretend to revive the edifices of an. 
extinct a^e. The Puritans did their best for the school 
house ; and following them, we ought to do ours. Go into 
the school, mark the cheerfulness and order of the scholars, 
the means of educating at once the senses and the intellect, 
the round of lessons, anon enlivened by music that makes 
the hours pass with a smile. Go through the various steps 
of the system. Visit the High School, and there hear 
Sherwin's boys solve problems in the higher mathematics in 
a manner that would have made the eyes of Oaks, the mar- 
vel of ancient provincial calculation, start out of his head 
with wonder at what the world has come to. Look into 
the Latin School, and hear Diswell and Gardner's scholars 
say their Latin and Greek in a way that would have made 
the man who was christened in that blanket, the learned 
and pious John Cotton, believe that Oxford and Cambridge 
had crossed the ocean, and learning was not indeed to be 
buried in the graves of our fathers. 

There are some things, perhaps, at which Philemon would 
shake his head. He used to think that almost all of science 
was in two books — the Bible and the arithmetic: first the 
Bible, second the arithmetic. He might think that we had 
changed the order, put the arithmetic first, and made the 
rule of three more prominent than the golden rule in our 
system of education. How is it? Are we secularizing 






SCHOOL INFLUENCES. t)7 

education, and giving our immediate temporal interests su- 
premacy over spiritual things ? I will not undertake to say 
that New. England feels none of the prevalent disposition 
to worship the dollar, and to study out ways to its shrine. 
The old Puritan may have a stern account in the matter 
with his children, yet they are not, by any means, wholly 
unworthy their ancestry, and while to him they may look 
somewhat irreverently in view of his ghostly austerity, 
they have no apologies to make to any men of other sec- 
tions of the country who accuse New England of being 
moved by a grovelling utilitarianism. 

Our southern and western brothers sometimes say, that 
the Yankees are cold and calculating; without passion or 
enthusiasm, without poetry or romance ; that for eloquence 
you must cross Mason and Dixon's line or the Alleghanies. 
Now, we do not believe a word of this stuff. New England 
has heart, great heart too. Her utility is the expression of 
noble ideas. Her uses embody manly energies and Chris- 
tian sentiments. Her common expediencies tend towards 
the beautiful in taste, and the human in feeling. Behold 
her fair villages, her valleys and hills, telling at once of 
thrift and of thought. Look to her schools, colleges, her 
homes for the blind and mute, her retreats for the widow 
and the orphan, her churches. With her, utility in her best 
efforts is but the expression of her best faith, the applica- 
tion of the highest truth to practical life. Her spiritual 
teachers are practical, her practical leaders have not been 
unspiritual. 

Think of Edwards, that dweller in the upper air of meta- 



68 AMERICAN LIFE. 

physical divinity. If he reasoned of the affections and the 
will, it was to bring the truth of God to act directly on the 
lives of men. His mind, like the stately mountains, between 
which he lived and labored, lifted its summit to the clouds, 
and sent down into the fields and homes of men streams of 
living water. Think of Channing, so spiritual and so prac- 
tical, writing of the workingman's culture, and of the Sun- 
day school, as earnestly as of the glory of God and dignity 
of the soul which God has made. His mind was like the 
ocean on whose shore he was cradled, and whose waves 
sparkling in beauty and swelling in grandeur, bear goodly 
ships upon their bosom and roll the treasures of the world 
towards the peaceful marts of industry. 

Our practical men are not unspiritual. Our great utilita- 
rian, Franklin, penned, with his own hand, a manual of 
prayer to the God of nature, and the mind that drew light- 
ning from the heavens, believed in a descending light far 
beyond the brightness of the electric spark. Bowditch, 
under his hand does not dull mathematical science beam 
with a divine radiance, and give the universe a more spirit- 
ual expression ? Because of him the sailor guides his ves- 
sel more securely, and has sweeter visions of home, as with 
open book he watches the chart, and stars, and the compass. 
Nay, has he not shown the relation between exact science 
and the divine intellect ? and does not cold calculas become 
even a ministry of faith, as he applies the law of numbers 
and figures to the heavens, and shows us that mathematics 
can note with the precision of musical notation, the harmo- 
ny which the heavenly orbs follow in their rythmic and eter- 



SCHOOL INFLUENCES. 69 

nal marches ? Sir, our Yankee utility is no foe of the ideal 
or the spiritual. It has been the handmaid of humanity and 
faith. 

Such may it ever be; and when society wins better or- 
der, and the marvellous development of industrial art and 
material wealth shall be guided by a truer philosophy of 
accommodation, doubt not that, among the agencies in this 
more Christian civilization, the New England school house 
will do its part. 

Mr. President, the hours trip on now with merry step. 
But you will not say that, in mentioning the name of a good 
man who has lately gone from the world, I am twining cy- 
press with your festive myrtle. Nay, do I not rather add 
an amaranth to the chaplet that crowns our feast ? 

Twelve years ago, a great educational movement begun 
in Massachusetts, which has had vast influence throughout 
the whole union, and which has done wonders in raising up 
a noble band of teachers by means of normal schools. If I 
understand the case, three men were chief in this work — 
Edmund Dwight, Edward Everett, Horace Mann— neither 
of them more efficient than the first, the noble Boston mer- 
chant, who gave his wealth and heart to the cause. He has 
died within the year past. An enterprising merchant, his 
gains were large and his charity kept pace with their ad- 
vance. A philanthropist, his benevolence was as unosten- 
tatious as it was unwearied. A Christian, he had much of 
the strict virtue of the old Puritan day, and all of the court- 
esy and refinement that give grace to the modern gentle- 
man. This word of appreciation and gratitude I am moved 
to say now in memory of Edmund Dwight of Massachusetts. 



IV. 

American Boys. 



AMERICAN COYS. 73 



AMERICAN BOYS. 

"QROBABLY in every age, since the time of poor Adam 
-*- and Eve's trouble with their willful son, the world has 
been supposed to be near its end on account of the naughti- 
ness of boys. We confess that, for ourselves, in moments of 
wrath at the impish perversity, or of sorrow at the preco- 
cious wickedness of noted specimens of American boy- 
hood, we have sometimes been tempted to that supposition, 
and certainly we could not much wonder if Young America 
furnished more food for the Prophet's avenging bears than 
Young Israel supplied. Yet the world has continued to be 
and generation after generation has risen from petticoats to 
jackets and trowsers, and jackets and trowsers to coats and 
pantaloons, without any utter extinction of the line of 
masculine succession. That succession will probably be 
kept up in this hemisphere, and here, as of old, the folly of 
youth will in due time be subdued by the wisdom of age. 
All the more earnestly, because of our good hope for the 
ultimate welfare of our country, we are disposed to look 
carefully and seriously at the tendencies of our sons, de- 
sirous at once of discovering their peculiar temptations 
and advantages. 

D 



,74 AMERICAN LIFE. 

Our daughters are constitutionally more marked by sen- 
sibility, and our sons are more marked by willfulness. The 
conseqnence is that we are more anxious what will happen 
to our daughters, and what will happen from our sons — 
the daughter's sensitiveness exposing her to receive harm, 
and the son's willfulness exposing him to do harm. We 
are not wise to quarrel with Nature, and we must expect 
that boys will be more noisy and mischievous than girls ; 
nay, we may count it a good sign of a lad's force of char- 
acter if there is a good share of aggressive, fun-loving pluck 
in his composition. Well managed, his animal spirits will 
give him all the more manly loyalty, and, when true to the 
right cause, he will be all the more true because so much 
living sap has gone up into the fruit of his obedience. Yet 
what is more sad than force of will perverted to base uses, 
and the strength of manhood sunk into the service of base 
lusts or fiendish passions? What is more sad than the 
sight presented every day in our streets — the scores of 
precocious manikins with the worst vices of men written 
over features almost infantile in their mould — boys who 
are hardly old enough to be beyond their mothers' watch, 
now swaggering with all the airs of experienced bloods, and 
polluting the air of God's heaven with the vocabulary of hell ? 
Where such monstrous excesses are not found, how fre- 
quent is the utter repudiation of the proper reverence to 
age and authority ! How many a stripling among* us seems 
to think it the very first proof of manly spirit to break the 
Divine law which gives the home its blessedness and the 
state its security, and to be proud to show that he is above 



AMERICAN BOYS. 75 

all such obselete notions as giving honor to father or 
mother. 

We shall be sorry to believe that American boys are 
worse than others ; yet it is very clear to us that they are 
exposed to some temptations peculiar to themselves, and 
that the natural willfulness of boyhood is here much exag- 
gerated by our social habits and institutions. The American 
boy partakes by nature, of course, of the temper of his 
English cousins, whose blood, in the main, he has in his 
veins ; yet how different are the habits of the two parties ! 
The English boy is encouraged, — nay, compelled — to re- 
main a boy; and his place at home, at school, at play, and 
at church, is -such as to foster the proper spirit of boyhood. 
He is made constantly to feel that he is under discipline ; 
and when aj)parently most free from constraint, and let out 
to play, upon the play-ground he is still bound by the laws 
of the game, and there is something in the rough sport that 
at once gives wholesome vent to his exuberant spirit and 
subdues his dogged individuality into something like loyal 
allegiance. The American boy, on the other hand, is ac- 
customed to hear all authority challenged, not only by 
reprobate outlaws but by speculative theorists ; and very 
often, before the training of the nursery is complete or the 
lessons of the school are half mastered, he is either in 
fancy or in fact put upon some form of money-getting 
that tempts him, if it does not force him, to be his own 
master. He is not encouraged to be a boy either in play 
or in earnest. At school every trait of morbid precocity is 
hailed too often as proof of genius, and the wholesome mirth 



70 AMERICAN LIFE. 

of the play-ground is sometimes proscribed as childish and 

useless. Tho more manly sports have boon in many quar- 
ters neglected for exciting books and shows, and in Borne 
oasos the novel and the theatre have carried the day over the 
good old cricket and loot-ball. The restless will, that 
ought to be caimed and consolidated into manly force by 
bravo exercise, is allowed to wear and fret itself into a pet- 
nlant willfulness; and thus the natural delicacy of the 
American constitution is exaggerated by a perverse train- 
ing. The normal check tor norvons sonsitivonoss is 
muscular exercise, and by an hour's stout motion in the 
open air the nerves calm their fever, and the healthful 
balance of life is restored. Our school-boys are too often 
Strangers to this grand secret of nature, and many of 
those most overtasked with study try to balance the weari- 
ness of the desk by in-door excitements quite as exhausting. 
It would delight us to Bee a serious and determined move- 
ment swoop through the country in favor of the revival of the 
old-fashioned manly sports, and wo anticipate more good 
from thorn than from any efforts in behalf of balls and thea- 
tres, with their suffocating atmosphere, glaring lights, and 
wasting excitement. Wo have vsomotimos boon led into 
very grave apprehensions for the moral purity as well as the 
physical health of our boys, on account of the neglect of 
the robust sports that at once occupy the time and vent the 
animal spirits. Tho moment the constitution becomes nor- 
vons and excitable — a morbid sonsitivonoss taking tho 
place of a wholesome muscular activity — there is a fearful 
exposure to prurient enticements, and monstrous abuses 



i . 

'■" 
fident that P*ay- 

gromi i nniefc needed as more faithful 

and churches to better the future of 4 

r die nat 
than an unnatur al dene it offends us far less to see 

4 h a little rough in tnonners, with a slight tendon 

with 

a paleness and excitabi may mdk 

may tempt morbid indulgence*. The ; 

ruder. . ; and the out- 

door cnre, nnder In im air and sun-hine. w more Kke- 

plant of it-; rank j 
lining. Our schools and eaDeg rnled too 

much upon the hot-bed principle, and th 
halls and recitation-re brewd ol 

of de of health far lew noble than die classic 

or the midnight lamp. Few persons, we believe, study too 
much, but moat seholani study unwisely; and with more of 
the right sort of play there would be more of the right .sort 
of work, and far Lett of the viees that haunt languid inas- 
and overwrought ner. 
Thin tendency among our youth is mneh exaggerated by 
their too frequent habits of diet, especially by the m 
tobacco. Personally we abominate the use of that weed in 

shape, and it seems to as the filthiest of all habr 
men to -tuff their months, and stain their teeth, and 
their expectorations to the nausea of beholders with this 
yellow narcotic; and although ;> little of the aroma of a 



78 AMERICAN LIFE. 

good cigar may not be offensive even to delicate nostrils, the 
whole atmosphere of a regular smoker is a nuisance, and 
his clothes are steeped in a fetid exhalation that, to sensi- 
tive olfactories, dismally announces his arrival before he en- 
ters the room. But for boy smokers and chewers we have 
no vestige of patience or toleration; and the sight beyond all 
others most ridiculous, were it not so painful, is that of a 
little juvenile, hardly old enough to go out without his 
mother, puffing huge volumes of smoke from a monstrous 
cigar, and, in his pale face and affected swagger, presenting 
in himself those two fearful traits of our Young America — 
the union of puny health with braggart insolence. We had 
a strong specimen of this union at an academic assembly in 
this city not long since, where the exercises were often 
rudely interrupted by a score or two of precocious strip- 
lings, who solaced themselves in the intervals of their stam- 
pedes by stimulating their courage with plugs of tobacco, 
in the absence of other stimulus. The worthy President 
rebuked them ; and a sound flogging would have been no 
more than their due. 

The first crisis in the career of our sons is probably at 
school, where they must run the gauntlet between two ranks 
of tempers — the pattern good boys, who slave themselves, 
mind and body, to the reigning spirit of emulation; and, 
on the other hand, the great company of idlers, whose tru- 
ancy and mischief-making sometimes have a chivalrous fas- 
cination to young blood beyond the attractions of the more 
demure book- worms. He may consider himself a favored 
father whose son escapes the ordeal with health unbroken 



AMERICAN BOYS. 79 

and principles intact, and who bids adieu to his school-days 
with good scholarship not purchased by feebleness of limb, 
and a good constitution, indebted for its robustness to bet- 
ter sport than robbing hen-roosts or giving bloody noses. 

We need not enter into the private history of college 
life, or say what hosts of trials and temptations every col- 
legian must conquer or subdue, for comparatively a small 
class of our youth enter college ; and, moreover, it is the 
lot of the great multitude of our sons who are in stores and 
counting-rooms to be exposed to many of the same dangers 
as beset such students, so that it is best to say a word espe- 
cially of those who are in training for business. The life 
of clerks and young salesmen in our cities is a curious and 
unwritten chapter of our American life, and few volumes 
would be more instructive than a catalogue of the hundred 
thousand youth in this city who are under some form of busi- 
ness training, and looking forward to a time of independence 
and competence. It would be sometimes pathetically and 
sometimes repulsively interesting to know how much 
compensation these young men receive for their labor 
or attendance, and how much money they spend yearly, 
and for what purposes. The account would vary from 
touching instances of self-sacrificing frugality to mon- 
strous cases of prodigality, fraud, and dissipation. How 
poor boys live, and how rich boys live, it would be 
well for us to know — well for us also to see that poor 
boys, or so regarded, mysteriously spend sometimes more 
money than the sons of our merchant princes. It would 
be important to ascertain whether it is not true that, as a 



80 AMERICAN LIFE. 

general rule, the young men of our cities are very exacting 
in their expenses, and if the cost of keeping a dashing 
youth in dress, amusements, etc., would not be amply suffi- 
cient to maintain an old-fashioned family in comfortable 
frugality. We have been told, on good authority, that our 
merchants object to take the sons of their own associates in 
gentility into their counting-rooms, on account of their self- 
indulgence and prodigality; and that something of the 
same preference for foreign service is appearing in merchan- 
dise which is already an established fact in our housekeep- 
ing. Some leading firms give the preference decidedly to 
English, French, or German assistants in their counting- 
houses, and are weary in trying to teach dainty young gen- 
tlemen the importance of learning how to take care of 
themselves, as a more important accomplishment than to 
drive a fast horse or parade the newest fashions of a coat or 
hat. The whole field of dissipation here opens upon us, 
and grave questions arise as to the obvious disposition to 
provide pleasures beyond the domestic circle, especially to 
separate young men from their fitting feminine associates, 
and gather them together by themselves in clubs, where 
man only rules, or else drive them to dens of infamy, where 
woman is seen only in her degradation. The whole subject 
of club-life, in its various forms, needs to be studied seriously, 
and we shall probably be startled at the vastness of the ar- 
rangements for keeping young men by themselves, too often 
to their disadvantage. Not only the establishments known 
as clubs, and some of which are wholly reputable, but many 
establishments not thus known, and bearing very innocent 



AMERICAN BOYS. 81 

names, would swell the list. The engine-houses sometimes 
fan worse fires than those which their brave champions ex- 
tinguish ; and we have heard of little coteries of youth in 
cities and villages hiring rooms (each coterie for its own 
uses) in order to have free access to the games and liquors 
that parental rule and feminine delicacy do not allow under 
the household roof. The examination of such errors would 
bring new blessings uf>on the Mercantile Library, and other 
like associations, that band young men together for their 
good, and call them from their homes for a season, only to 
send them back better sons, brothers, and lovers. We are 
in advance of our subject, we are aware, in these remarks, 
since we have been dealing more with the schooling and 
apprenticeship of our sons than with their direct business 
career. 

At school however, and often long before the youth en- 
ters his teens, the second crisis of his career casts its 
ominous shadow before, and the American boy is called to 
think, perhaps to decide, upon the business he shall pursue. 
Here is a great and fearful question, and one that, in some 
respects, is becoming more embarrassing in the changes of 
fortune aud the revolutions in social ideas. The old idea 
was that a boy should, if there were no reason for the con- 
trary course, follow his father's calling, and be a farmer, 
mechanic, merchant, lawyer, or what not, according to the 
paternal precedent. But now the tendency is quite other- 
wise, and it is the general disposition of our young people 
to press upward (as they consider it) into the occupations 
that demand the least manual labor, and seem to offer the 

D2 



82 AMERICAN LIFE. 

greatest prestige of what is called gentility. The consequence 
is, that farming and the mechanic arts have lost much of their 
old attractiveness to the sons of farmers and mechanics and 
the ranks of trade and the professions are overstocked with 
aspirants. The number of youth in our cities who are 
seeking some kind of employment that allows them to 
have a delicate hand, and wear kid gloves and polished 
boots is enormous, and furnishes a fearful number of recruits 
to the army of vice and crime. What the cause . of the 
disinclination to the manual arts is, it is not always easy to 
say; and certainly, in the nature of things, there is far 
more demand for intellect, and far more exercise of manly 
power, in tilling the soil or building houses and ships, than 
in selling silks or calicoes behind the counter. It would 
be a great gain if ten thousand clerks could at once go into 
the fields and work-shops, where they are wanted, and leave 
their places to ten thousand young women, who have nothing 
to do but to make their poor fingers the hopeless rivals of 
the sewing machine, and to anticipate the uncertain time 
when some young man, not yet able to pay for his own 
board and clothes, shall venture upon the enterprise of 
taking a wife less thrifty than himself. It is partly from 
the false feminine notions of gentility that much of the 
rising aversion to manual labor springs, and much harm 
comes from the frequent preference of the dainty swain of 
the counter over the far abler worker at the plow or plane 
by sentimental maidens, who have studied out their ideas 
of the gentleman from trashy novels and not from the good 
old Bible and its noble standard of the gentle heart. 



AMERICAN BOYS. 83 

It would be very interesting and instructive if we could 
have a census of the boys who annually leave the public 
schools, with a full statement of their purposes for the 
future. It would be found, we think, far more illustrative 
of vain ambition than of republican industry and simplicity. 
It might appear that, with all our theoretic assertion of the 
dignity of labor, nowhere on earth are the sons of the la- 
boring classes so desirous of escaping their father's lot as 
here, and nowhere are there so many aspirants for dainty 
gentility as here. Undoubtedly the changes that have 
lately taken place in the position of labor have had much to 
do with the tendency to overcrowd trade and the professions. 
Hosts of foreigners now throng our work-shops, and under- 
bid natives in prices, and often scandalize them by profli- 
gacy. But the same inundation threatens many forms of 
trade. In many towns and cities the retail business is fast 
falling into the hands of foreigners^ and the number of Irish 
and German grocers is becoming enormous, while many 
branches of dry-goods traffic are in the hands of Jews. We 
believe that, any practical man who will compare the 
promise of trade now with its promise thirty or forty years 
ago, can give a picture as startling as true of the present 
trials of our young aspirants to fortune as compared to the 
trials of the old times. There is always, of course, an 
opening for sagacity and energy, but with the increase of 
facilities the difficulties of success have also increased; 
and the young American who starts in the race of fortune 
with the fond dream of a golden goal, finds himself between 
two sets of rivals, one of whom snatch after the small prizes 



84 AMERICAN LIFE. 

and the other after the high prizes. He finds the retail 
business crowded with a host of foreigners, who can live on 
next to nothing and undersell fair competitors ; and, on the 
other hand the strong-holds of wholesale traffic are held by- 
mighty monopolists, who are as formidable from their mar- 
ble and iron warehouses, to aspirants without friends or 
fortune, as the Malakoff, with its guns and soldiery, would 
be to a squad of assailants without guns or intrenchments 
to back them in their advance. 

With the increase in the difficulties of doing a success- 
ful business there is no corresponding diminution in the 
demands of living — surely no corresponding increase in 
the social alleviations of ill success. Society is constantly 
becoming more exacting, and he is a bold man who dares 
to begin a moderate business with the habits of household 
simplicity that were thought fifty years ago not unworthy 
the family of a prosperous merchant and a distinguished 
lawyer. Here comes in a potent element in the welfare of 
our sons — the present condition of household life, and the 
standard of expectation among those who are to be their 
wives, if any wives they are to have. It is a very serious 
question whom our son shall marry, and it is a serious ques- 
tion to him even if he never marries at all; for, as our na- 
ture is constituted, a young man thinks too much of pleas- 
ing his female friends, and his standard of manly conduct 
and independent position is largely decided by the reigning 
feminine code of expectation. Now there are certainly 
very grave difficulties in reconciling the average promise of 
any moderate business with the average standard of house- 



AMERICAN BOYS. 85 

hold expenditure ; and the question which Mr. Punch joc- 
ularly discusses, " Can a man marry on three hundred 
pounds a year? " is with many of our young men far from a 
joking matter. Many families, indeed, do live on less than 
three hundred pounds a year in America, and many must 
live on three hundred dollars a year, if they live at all. Bat 
the cases of frugal living most frequently adduced among 
people of comfortable homes are from country life where 
many articles that cost high in the city are regarded as 
costing no more than air and water, being treated almost as 
much like gifts of nature. Let a fair money price be set to 
the potatoes, corn, milk, eggs, apples, pork, etc., consumed by 
the plain farmer, and his outlay thus estimated rises into 
figures somewhat formidable. But take the most modest 
standard of city gentility as our guide, and Mr. Punch's 
three hundred pounds sink into insignificance. No man 
ought to pay more than one quarter of his income for rent ; 
and what kind of a house will one quarter of fifteen hun- 
dred dollars procure in a city like ours ? Nay, how hard it 
is to procure, for thrice three hundred dollars, a house with 
what are called the modern conveniences, and now a de- 
sirable house costs two thousand a year ! Then there is the 
matter of servants; and the most moderate standard of 
gentility in our towns insists upon having at least one ser- 
vant, while our city habits prescribe from two' to five or six 
servants, the standard number being three in well-to-do 
families. We are willing to astonish the more luxurious 
portion of our readers by confessing at once that we write 
more for the common lot than for the favored few, and that 



86 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the boys for whose future we are most solicitous are those 
who are in our public schools, and who represent the aver- 
age condition of the American people. Of our millions of 
school-boys, thousands are destined to fame or fortune ; but 
such is not the general lot, and not only the largest but the 
most important class can not be expected to rise above the 
necessity of frugal living, while in the outset the greater 
proportion of the few who rise to wealth are obliged to 
practice great frugality. We may consider it, then, the 
almost universal condition of our sons that they ought to 
begin life in a very modest way, and if they marry as early 
as the best wisdom and morality dictate they must at once 
put down their foot against the prevalent social ostentation. 
The first years of married life do much to decide the whole 
future of the family ; and if a man finds himself committed 
to a style of expenditure beyond his means he is embar- 
rassed, and enfeebled, and dispirited at the very time when 
he ought to be gaining courage, health, and means for the 
sober years that are coming. Here, surely, is a most vital 
point in the welfare of our sons — the need of such an ad- 
justment of our household habits as to bring a reasonably 
early marriage within the mark of moderate expenditure. 
The boarding-house and the hotel are the too ready resort 
in this need ; but while their frugality to the purse is more 
than doubtful, their waste of heart, and mind is beyond all 
question, and our American life is often wounded to the 
vitals by the consequent breaking down of domestic qui- 
etude, privacy, and industry. The true antidote must be 
found in simpler and more republican methods of house- 



AMERICAN BOYS. 87 

keeping, that shall secure due comfort and refinement with- 
out wreck of health and competence. Neat homes for smal 1 
families are the very first want in our towns and cities; 
and with their rise we need the growth, especially on the 
part of our young women, more reasonable notions of social 
respectability. As society now is, our young women form 
their standard of expectation upon exceptional cases; and 
even if they do not expect to have decidedly rich husbands, 
they are not content to look forward to the moderate in- 
come that most kinds of regular industry bring. A little 
plain figuring might, perhaps, be of great use to the thou- 
sands of tapered-fingered, narrow-chested, lily-cheeked girls 
who have selected their husbands from the pages of trashy 
novels, and resigned — at least, in their dreams — their 
maiden liberty to some dashing Alphonso for a villa, a car- 
riage, and all the attendant elegances. 

Perhaps those who are themselves penniless are some- 
times most exacting of fortune, and least disposed to 
prolong the hard livelihood which' they by experience know 
too well. Plain figures from the arithmetic might be more 
suggestive than the tropes of romance. The simplest 
statements of the average yield of industrious labor and 
enterprise would astonish many of our ambitious republican 
maidens, and their often more ambitious mammas, more 
than the trumpet of judgment, and it would be seen that 
the standard of dependence is generally based upon excep- 
tional luck, and not upon regular industry. Begin with 
the returns of common labor, which gives the unit from 
which calculation should start. A hard-working man, not 



88 AMERICAN LIFE. 

master of a regular trade, is highly favored, either in city 
or country, if he earns, on an average of working days, a 
dollar a day, in gold, or three hundred dollars a year ; while 
an accomplished mechanic, not master of a shop, is favored 
if he gains a dollar a day more, or four hundred and fifty dol- 
lars a year, throughout all times and all weather. A capa- 
ble clerk can not expect during his first years of service 
much more ; and probably an offer of five hundred dollars 
salary would bring at this time more candidates for a tolera- 
ble clerkship, demanding considerable gifts of address and 
penmanship, than the advertiser could examine in a week. 
The smaller kinds of retail business yield very scanty in- 
comes — and these, too, are very precarious, especially in 
the dry-goods trade ; so that while they tempt showy tastes 
they impose very close limitations of expense. The pro- 
fessions that require scholastic education offer a few pecu- 
niary prizes, but present a very low average reward. A 
good teacher is highly favored who is sure of Mr. Punch's 
three hundred pounds a year, or fifteen hundred dollars in 
gold ; and in the country towns half that sum is often 
eagerly welcomed. Lawyers and doctors do not generally 
at first earn their bread and rent, and must trust to some 
collateral resources from parents or wives, or teaching or 
writing, to keep soul and body together. Our clergy in 
the country towns do not average in gold six hundred dol- 
lars a year; and the few who, in cities, have salaries of 
four, five, or even six thousand dollars, in gold, are burden- 
ed by a rate of conventional expenditure that keeps them 
often without a dollar of surplus. Leaving out of account a 



AMERICAN BOYS. 89 

very few lawyers, and still fewer physicians, the only class 
of men who can expect large incomes from their business 
are successful merchants ; and it is to them that we may 
justly ascribe the origin of the prevalent standard of social 
ostentation. Our successful merchants are our millionaires, 
or else those who expend the income of millions of dollars 
without any corresponding capital. The latter, probably, 
have done more than any other class to corrupt our republi- 
can principles, and our most frequent and dangerous prodigal- 
ity may be ascribed to the great number of merchants who 
are doing a large business mainly on credit, and who regu- 
late their expenses upon the standard of their most lucra- 
tive years. They do not not mean to be extravagant or 
dishonest — for we regard our merchants as generally quite 
honorable in their purposes — but they are too often under 
a fatal hallucination by mistaking the exception for the 
rule, and learning their sad error in the fatal years of re- 
vulsion and shipwreck. The great majority of businesses 
can claim but very moderate gains in the average balances 
of a twenty years' operation ; and he may be set down as 
a very fortunate man, in any ordinary business, who for 
twenty years supports his family modestly, educates his. 
children well, pays his debts, and lays up a thousand dol- 
lars yearly. Such a moderate accumulation may, to many, 
seem contemptible, but there are thousands who have called 
it contemptible who would think themselves vastly favored 
now if they could pay their debts and call a single thousand 
dollars their own. 

The sober truth is that we are wrong in our whole standard 



90 AMERICAN LIFE. 

of social expectation, and that we ought to open our eyes to 
the simple facts, and train our sons to adjust their methods 
by the rule and not by the exception. "We are well aware 
that young blood does not relish restraint, and that it is far 
harder to stop a fast youth from running the wrong way 
than it is to push him forward in the right way. It is pre- 
cisely for this very reason that we hope for a better day for 
our Young America, whether it walks in petticoats or pan- 
taloons. We do not believe much in mere negations, and 
young people are not much bettered by being scolded and 
kept down. The way to improve them is to carry a war 
into the enemy's country, and enlist the warmth of young 
blood in the bold and aggressive affirmation of the true 
republican principles in their sober sense, honest frugality, 
stout industry, and manly independence. We hope to see 
the true Young America rising from our schools, homes and 
churches, and supplanting the hideous carricatures that now 
so often pass for the real likeness. We hope to see hosts 
of young men among us who are more proud of frugal 
habits sustained by honest and intelligent labor, than of 
prodigality pampered by gambling, adventure or enslav- 
ing debt. We hope to see hosts of young women who 
are more eager to be wives of worthy young fellows 
whom they can love and help on in the world by good 
economy and womanly affectionateness than to sell them- 
selves to churlishness or decrepitude, and sacrifice heart and 
soul to luxury and pretension. The education that shall 
train such young men and young women will be quite 
startling to our regiments of street and parlor gentry who 



AMERICAN BOYS. 91 

pride themselves on their elegance and nselessness ; but it 
will be found in the end that the best refinement, as well 
as the best sense, is with the new movement, and true taste 
will rise as vulgar ostentation and laziness fall. We look 
anxiously for the coming of this better time — and its 
coming will inaugerate a new day for our sons, by giving 
them the true motive for their work and the true compan- 
ionship for their household. Our America has many ques- 
tions to settle, but none is more important than this : When 
shall our sons seek the true honor in the best usefulness, 
and when shall the power of woman help them in the seek- 
ing ? We might choose many samples of American skill 
and enterprise to prove our progress in civilization, but the 
best proof must be the best specimen of our standard 
American life. The fastest ship, the best reaping-machine, 
the most perfect photograph, the most deadly revolver, 
or the most voluble Congressman, would be poor trifles to 
send to some great World's Fair compared with the model 
republican home in which a worthy youth and maiden 
from our public schools have mated hearts and hands, and 
found all the substantial blessings of life, with Heaven's 
smile, in the reward of patient and honorable industry, 
whether more or less than three hundred pounds a year. 



V. 

American Girls. 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 95 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 

/"WR daughters — what is to be their lot in life ? This 
is a question that thousands of parents are now 
asking with peculiar solicitude. In one respect we are far 
more anxious for them than for our sons; for, while our 
sons are likely to be so tempted by their passions and po- 
sition as to be guilty of misconduct, our daughters, from 
their sensitiveness and dependence, are more exposed to 
misfortune. Our misgivings as to the future of our sons is 
mainly on account of what they may be tempted to do, 
while our misgivings as to the future of our daughters is 
mainly on account of what may happen to them. By 
nature and association a girl is, in respectable society, far 
more effectually guarded from immorality than a boy, yet 
by no means more effectually guarded from suffering. Her 
delicate organization, that feels so much more quickly the 
play of heat and cold, feels quite as quickly the smiles and 
frowns, the warmth and chills, in the social sphere. A 
woman, as such, is more in the passive tone than man, and 
however gifted may be her intellect, she rather waits on 
fortune than commands it. The great event in her social 



96 AMERICAN LIFE. 

lot is a type of her whole destiny. In marriage she is the 
party to be sought, and loses her prestige the moment she 
seems to be the party seeking. In the Court of Fortune, 
too, her position is much the same, and they are few, and 
by no means the most winning of their sex, who can lay 
aside the usual feminine delicacy and reserve, and march 
with bold stride up the heights of fame and fortune, with- 
out allowing the sweeping petticoat to interfere with the 
freedom of their step. We may lament that it is so, and 
that so many noble women wait, and wait apparently in 
vain, for a lot worthy of their mind and heart ; yet so it 
has been, and so it is likely to be until some signal changes 
are made in our social order. There is a great deal of per- 
manent truth in what Martin Luther said to his wife 
Catharine when she was weeping convulsively over the 
body of their dear daughter: "Do not take on so, dear 
wife ; remember that this is a very hard world for girls, and 
say, ' God's will be done.' " For girls who have their own 
way to make this is a hard world in the most obvious 
sense, for it is far from easy for them to win a proper living. 
For girls, too, whose way is made for them by the wealth 
and care of parents, this is not always an easy world, for 
the heart may be more exacting as means more abound, 
and the affections may be starved or tortured in a home 
overflowing with luxuries. 

In our American life the natural dependence of woman 
upon circumstances is increased by a variety of causes. 
Here woman has a peculiar delicacy of physical constitu- 
tion that makes her especially sensitive to external influ- 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 97 

ences, even when in tolerable health, and renders it very- 
difficult for her to keep herself in full health. Whether it 
is the climate, or our way of living, or whatever may be 
the cause, the fact is certain that the American girl is a 
very delicate plant; beautiful, indeed, in comparison with 
others ; more exquisitely organized than the English and 
German girl, and more self-relying than the Italian or 
French, yet not generally strong in nerve and muscle, and 
too ready to fade before her true mid-summer has come. 
The statistics given us by such alarmists as Miss Catharine 
Beecher, in her memorable and important book on the 
health of American women, may be too partial in their 
character, and deal too exclusively with the dark side of 
the subject, yet the facts stated can not be questioned, and 
if there be a brighter side the dark side must still be rec- 
ognized. We have heard persons who might be expected 
to know what they say, declare that they can hardly name 
a single instance of perfect health among the young wom- 
en of their acquaintance, and the physicians whom we 
hear speaking of the subject not seldom lose their patience 
in setting forth the miseries of feminine invalidism, with 
its shattered nerves and morbid circulations. If half of 
what is said is true, it is one* half too much ; and if our 
mothers had not been better gifted with maternal faculties 
than the candidates now ready for the bridal ring, the 
present number of the native American population 
could be accounted for only by miracle, not by natural 
descent. If the ill were confined to the over-luxurious and 
the affluent, the marvel would be less ; but the truth is, that 

E 



98 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the daughters of the fanner and the mechanic, who are 
not exposed to such excesses of indulgence, are not exempt 
from the same lot ; and perhaps the most melancholy por- 
tion of the statistics of female health in America is 
furnished by the medical annals of some of our country 
towns. It may be, and probably is the case, that in such 
towns the laws of diet, dress, air, and exercise are more 
ignored and neglected than in families of tolerable intelli- 
gence in the city ; and we are quite certain that sometimes 
the daughters of hard-working farmers eat, dress, sleep, and 
idle in a way very rare even among city fashionists. 

In affluent families in the city the cookery is usually 
tolerable, and hot cakes green with saleratus, and pastry 
heavy as lead, are monstrosities never seen, while the sleep- 
rooms are ample and well-ventilated, wholly unlike the 
stinted bed-rooms in which some country people shut them- 
selves up, and even in the heat of summer persist in shut- 
ting down the windows, from fear of the damp or the pes- 
tilence in the night-air. We believe that, on the whole, 
our city people take as much exercise — certainly as much 
out-door exercise — as is habitual with a large class of 
country girls. We have known a farmer's daughter look 
upon a walk of a mile to church as an intolerable grievance, 
and we have been amazed to find the idea current in some 
country families that walking is hardly a desirable process, 
and that a stroll through the pleasant green lanes to as 
great a distance as a city belle often condescends to sweep 
with her dainty crinoline in Broadway or the Avenue, is a 
thing not to be thought of. Such cases may be exceptions, 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 99 

yet it is strange that they exist at all, and we must regard it 
as one of the causes of the ill-health of American girls in the 
medium ranks of society that notions of inactivity and un- 
natural living that are wholly exploded in the most favored 
quarters, still keep their foothold in more lowly homes, and 
perhaps are cherished as proofs of superior gentility. On 
the whole, it may be true that the country is quite on the 
level with the city in its exposure of the health of daugh- 
ters, and that quite as much mischief is done by neglect of 
the common laws of diet, air, and exercise in the farm-house 
as is done by the late hours and exciting pleasures of city 
mansions. Better ideas are indeed making progress, yet far 
too tardily, and in many cases the jewel of health is lost 
before the secret of its preservation is found. For our own 
part, we could rejoice in the rise of*a new order of mission- 
aries, whose mission it should be to preach the law and gos- 
pel of health, as a part of the doctrine of salvation by the 
water of baptism and the bread of life. The water and the 
bread that signify spiritual purification and nurture have also 
their physical significance, and the time may be near for 
bringing health of soul and body into nearer than the 
usual connection. Certainly, if the two are ever so near as 
to be identical, it is in the education of those who are to be 
mothers, and whose health or sickness may be the blessing 
or bane to the mind and body of their offspring. 

Very likely the climate of America gives to our women 
something of the delicacy to then* constitution, yet our 
habits of living and our stimulating social system contribute 
quite as much toward the result. Our social system, in one 



100 AMERICAN LIFE. 

respect, is more stimulating to the nerves of women than 
the social systems of the Old World with its hereditary rank 
and fixed conventions. Here all the paths of fame and fortune 
are nominally open to all aspirants, and our young people, 
in most communities, are brought up in schools and churches 
where a feeling of social equality prevails. Our sons begin 
life quite ready to contest the highest rewards of business 
and politics with their richer school-fellows, and our 
daughters have very nearly the same tastes and expecta- 
tions, whatever may be the differences of rank or fortune. 
The boy is trained to rough it in the fight, and if he can 
not reach his first aim, he persists till he finds some work or 
place worth possessing. But the girl, far more sensitive, 
with tastes more exacting and gifts less obtrusive, is left far 
more at the mercy of circumstance, and may find herself 
at once set wholly apart from the society of the schoolmate 
who was next her in the class, perhaps her confidante in 
play-hours without being her equal in study. A limited 
purse, an uncongenial home, objectionable relatives, or one 
of a thousand causes may separate the sensitive and aspir- 
ing school-girl from her cherished associates, and may make 
her whole life seem a disappointment because it falls below 
the standard of girlish aspiration. So true is it that our 
American society gives to most of our well-educated girls 
the same ideal of what is desirable, and makes them very 
sensitive to the charms of that ideal without by any means 
equalizing proportionately the means of attaining the mark. 
Very soon that arbiter of social distinction that is nowhere 
more powerful than here — wealth with its heraldry of 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 101 

dress — begins to show its sceptre and proclaim its sway, 
and the girls who before played together merrily in the 
plain gowns of the school-room, find themselves parted 
widely asunder by the costumes of the drawing-room ; and 
pretty Fanny, in her muslin and ribbon, may seem even to 
herself a creature of coarser mould than stately Georgiana 
with her brocade and diamonds. We may call this sensi- 
tiveness to externals in the young women of America lu- 
dicrous or contemptible, yet it is a great and melancholy 
fact — a fact to be estimated not only by the tears and 
heart-burnings which it causes, but by the petulant tem- 
pers, the pretentious and unjustifiable extravagance, the 
ill-assorted marriages, which are the not infrequent result. 
There are probably few parents in moderate circumstances 
in our cities and towns who are not troubled by the j>ainful 
dependence of their daughters upon externals, and the 
mortifying comparisons which are apt to be instituted by 
the prevalent scale of external distinctions. In our cities, 
the differences that are very soon instituted between girls 
who were equals at school by differences of dress and style 
of living may seem to be more conspicuous, yet it must be 
remembered that in cities the schools themselves in a meas- 
ure forestall the more extreme comparisons, by bringing 
together into the more costly seminaries scholars of a cer- 
tain average amount of privilege, while in the large towns 
or secondary cities it is no unusual thing for all the young 
people to be brought together as companions in the same 
schools, and we know high schools in which (we are glad 
that it is so) the daughters of the blacksmith and drayman 



102 AMERICAN LIFE. 

sit side by side with the daughters of the judge and the 
banker. Now, this republicanism in education stands in 
marvelous contrast with the non-republicanism of society ; 
and the contrast is becoming greater, instead of less, by the 
growing expensiveness of social habits. They who were 
equals and perhaps fond companions at school, find that 
mutual embarrassments spring from continuing the intima- 
cy, and that each is becoming more marked by style of dress 
or entertaining than by intellectual endowments. The 
blacksmith's daughter tasks her father's purse too much 
by arraying herself in attire fitting for the banker's party 
or ball, and even the successful professional man finds 
it difficult to keep his daughters on tolerably equal terms in 
society with his richer neighbors. Brilliant gifts, of talent 
or beauty, may, indeed, set at naught more superficial dis- 
tinctions ; but these are very rare, and with young women 
of average endowments it must be allowed that the rising 
ostentation is having more and more power, and working 
against the equalizing tendency of American education. 
The simple cost of dressing moderately within the require- 
ments of what is called good society in our cities and large 
towns, is a very formidable item in the calculation of fami- 
lies of moderate means, and to a young woman of refined 
tastes, who is dependent upon her own exertion for support, 
the sum is often quite disheartening. A girl of superior gifts 
and education may, indeed, by teaching, maintain herself 
handsomely, and even assist her infirm relatives ; but the 
usual compensation of a teacher is generally a meagre sup- 
port; for what will two or three or four hundred dol- 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 103 

lars a year even in gold do toward boarding and clothing a 
person of delicate tastes and fastidious associations ? When 
a young woman depends upon more arduous and less lucra- 
tive labors, such as those of the needle, she must burn the 
lamp of sacrifice as well as toil, and not only abandon her 
time but also her cherished love of ornament to the inexor- 
able necessity. Certainly the great tragedy of American 
life is writing itself now in the fortunes of the hosts of wo- 
men dependent upon precarious means of support. In one 
respect the tragedy is sometimes deeper with the young 
than the mature, for to the young it brings greater tempta- 
tion to couple shame with sorrow, and sacrifice virtue for 
bread and costume. We know very well how powerful a 
safeguard the American girl has in her pure instincts and 
Christian breeding ; yet the safeguard is not always effec- 
tual, and the streets of our city too often bring to light the 
shame that has been hiding itself in our quiet towns and 
rural villages. Not sensuality, we believe, but the desire, 
so universal in America, of appearing well dressed, causes 
the downfall of the greater number of American girls who 
lapse from purity. Fearful stories have come to our ears 
of cases quite near to the rightful sympathies of Christian 
people, and they that study the subject most thoroughly 
are very sure to mingle pity with their condemnation. To 
most parents, the mere supposition of a daughter's disgrace 
is an utter monstrosity not to be thought of for a moment. 
May it always continue to be so considered ! and that it 
may be so, the causes that sometimes tempt innocence to 
shame must be studied and guarded against. 



104 AMERICAN LIFE. 

In our solicitude for the lot of American daughters, we 
confess that we think more anxiously of the general average 
than of exceptional cases, whether above or below the aver- 
age. We think more frequently of the girls in our public 
schools, who are to share the common welfare and decide 
the general character of the nation, than of the few rich 
who are petted in our palaces, or the few poor who are left 
to starve in our streets. Our standard American woman 
ought to be a fair representative of the common lot and we 
look for her in the pleasant array of intelligent faces that 
cheer the visitor at our. public school examinations, from 
year to year. Go into one of our best schools on such a 
day, and meditate upon the probable destiny of that great 
company. Listen to the recitation of that first class of 
some fifty girls, and try in their faces to read the horos- 
cope of their destiny. At first sight they may seem almost 
as much alike as if all of one circle of relatives, yet a 
closer scrutiny reveals the widest differences of fortune, 
position, and even of nationality. Of most of them, how- 
ever, we may predicate one fact — the fact that they are, 
in the main, to depend upon themselves, and meet the trials 
incident to American society with a temperament peculiar- 
ly ambitious and sensitive. Most of them have been edu- 
cated by some sacrifice on the part of their parents, and 
will have no dowry except a good education, and a little 
help in setting up their household gods, whenever they have 
a household of their own. Most of them are evidently not 
robust, and even their prettiness is purchased by fragility 
of frame, and in too many of them the paleness or the deli- 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 105 

cate bloom of the cheek, and the fine lines of the lip and 
the nostrils, are offset by a stoop of the shoulders, and a 
narrowness of the chest. We are not disposed to croak 
over their fixture, but we can not promise them, on the 
whole, a very easy lot, whether they marry or remain sin- 
gle. Some high prizes are to be distributed among them 
in the lottery of life, but the blanks are to be more numerous 
unless a high purpose shall elevate to its own level a medi- 
ocre or a lowly lot. They may be spared the ills that 
haunt the more ambitious heads of the procession from the 
fashionable boarding-school that marches by them in their 
promenade, yet they will not escape all the evils of social 
ostentation — and some of them, perhaps, may chase the 
gilded toy more eagerly because they see it only in the 
enchantment of distance. Ten or fifteen years will make 
marvelous revelations to those fifty maidens, and will call not 
a few of them away from the world. Those of the compa- 
ny whose lot is most to be cherished as an example are 
those of them who bless some honest man's home as wife 
-and mother, and adorn and enlarge with a true woman's 
grace the moderate share of wordly good bestowed. Two or 
three of them may be called to preside over splendid man- 
sions, with husbands of large wealth, more probably acquir- 
ed than inherited ; and at least quite as many will lure per- 
plexed husbands into reckless extravagance, and sacrifice 
the household to the frequent American folly of trying to 
seem what we are not, and destroying the reality of peace 
to keep up the appearance of pride. 

A considerable number of the fifty will never marry — 
E2 



106 AMERICAN LIFE. 

for it is evident that the proportion of marriages does not 
increase among the educated class in America, especially 
among those who are trained to study actions in their 
consequences, and to temper impulse by discretion ; and 
the moment the mercantile habit of counting the cost pre- 
vails, the list of marriages signally falls. In the year 1850 the 
number of marriages in the United States, according to the 
census, was 197,029, while the number of deaths was 324,394 
including 52,504 slaves. In England and Wales, the year 
before, the number of marriages was 141,599, and the 
number of deaths was 219,052 — the ratio of marriages to 
deaths there being somewhat greater than with us. Part 
of the high ratio in Great Britain is to be accounted for by 
the improvidence of the poor, who marry as readily as 
animals mate, without reckoning consequences, and part of 
it may be more hopefully accounted for by the less exact- 
ing standard of common life there, and the willingness of 
people in moderate circumstances to live according to 
their means, as their fathers and mothers did before them. 
Our observation in this country — which has been pretty 
wide and various — leads us to believe that, in proportion 
to the male population, a larger number of marriages takes 
place in country towns, where farm life makes a wife an 
economy as well as a comfort, and in manufacturing places, 
where young people of simple habits and quick sensibilities 
are brought much into each other's company. Our im- 
pression is, that in American cities the ratio of marriage in 
proportion to the male population, is on the decrease ; a 
fact which we ascribe in part to the increase of the expen- 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 107 

ses of living incident to the inflation, not only of the prices 
of provisions, but of the demands of social ambition ; and 
in part to the growth of European habits among us, and 
the facilities for licentious pleasures. As to this latter point 
— the facilities for licentiousness — we have been lately 
startled by statistics of European states on this subject, in 
a pamphlet from the pen of an English clergyman — Rev. 
R.Everest — who has given a comparative view of the 
proportion of marriages to population in Europe, and shown 
the remarkable coincidence between the existence of ex- 
travagant habits and general licentiousness, especially in the 
contrast between the small ratio of marriages and the large ra- 
tio of the illegitimate births in the imperial cities and the court 
districts, and the ratio between the two in the more plebe- 
ian cities and districts. Wherever two castes prevail, and 
a certain class are bound to a certain rate of expense and 
style, marriage is invariably much restricted, and the titled 
class tend to corrupt the poor and untitled. In this coun- 
try, where no hereditary rank exists, social ambition is 
creating castes almost as offensive, and often quite as cor- 
rupting ; and in our great cities the number of men constant- 
ly increases, whose tastes, or ambition, or selfishness 
preclude them from marriage under their average 
opportunities ; and hence the very obvious result of an 
increasing proportion of persons who live by pandering to 
their licentiousness. 

Whatever may be the cause, marriage is on the decrease 
among the more wary, thoughtful classes ; and we can not 
but be impressed by the authoritative statistics of Massachu • 



108 AMERICAN LIFE. 

setts, which state that, there is a greater proportion of 
marriages among the foreign residents, most of whom are 
comparatively poor and unthrifty. We are quite certain 
that, taking any considerable number of years in the aggre- 
gate, the ratio of marriages to population decreases with 
the increase of habits of extravagance, and the necessity 
of keeping up a costly establishment. We believe that 
marriages will decrease until the times or manners change, 
and that among the facts that are to shape the destiny of 
the daughters of America, especially in the older and more 
luxurious cities, we must number the relatively fewer 
chances to be offered in the matrimonial lottery, and the 
moral necessity of there being a larger proportion of un- 
married women. We do not say that marriage is of itself 
a blessing, irrespective of character and circumstance — 
and are quite ready to allow that to marry ill is worse by 
far than not to marry at all — yet we quite as firmly believe 
that a good marriage is the best condition for woman as 
for man ; and we can not but regret the tendency that 
must keep so many of our daughters single, so long as 
they abide by the tastes in which they have been educated. 
A father whose heart is in the right place, and who loves 
his daughters as a true father always will, can not, indeed, 
be accused of wishing to be rid of his daughters, and so far 
as his own personal feelings are concerned he would rejoice 
to have them always with him ; but this may not be, since 
time and change are always at work, and the daughter's 
welfare is better secured by a new home that may continue 
after the old home is broken up, and father and mother are 
no more. 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 109 

We confess that we are advocates for marriage, and for 
marriages as early as the laws of health and the dictates of 
prudence allow. Young people are saved from many evils 
by identifying their whole destiny with each other's, and 
the wife's affections and the husband's purity are then in 
the best possible keeping, under God's law and Christ's 
grace. We know very well that theorists of extreme 
classes who have noted the decrease in the number of mar- 
riages in high life, are inclined to rejoice at it, and for 
opposite reasons — the one class because they think celi- 
bacy to be the higher condition, the other class because 
they think the old relation of the wife to the husband 
wholly wrong, and any change is to be welcomed that 
obliges woman to make herself independent of man, and 
cease to wait in any way upon his favor. Without arguing 
with the ascetic the question whether, to certain persons of 
peculiar position and temperament, celibacy may not be 
a duty, we are content to say, that, on the whole, monastic 
life, in its best estate, has little charm to a large and 
-thoughtful observer of man's nature and God's providence; 
and if, in certain cases, the cowl and vail have fallen upon 
men and women who were virgins for the kingdom of 
heaven's sake, the cowl and the vail do not of themselves 
imply virginal affections, and when not assumed voluntarily 
they are apt to imply or create quite the opposite state of 
mind. A community in a large proportion nominally celi- 
bate is not usually conspicuous for the contentment of the 
women or the purity of the men, and we do not believe 
that Heaven is like to be any nearer the hosts of celibates, 



110 AMERICAN LIFE. 

who are now made such, not by any monastic rules, nor in 
any Libyan deserts, but by the artificial exactions of fash- 
ion, and in the hotels and monster boarding-houses of our 
cities. We believe that a true Christian wife has a purity 
that angels may not scorn, and many a nun might covet, and 
that the man who keeps his marriage-vows need not ask of 
any ghostly monk for lessons in manly virtue. The longer 
we live the more we reverence God's obvious law, and the 
less admire the devices of men who forbid marriage, and 
so undertake to be wiser than God. 

We quite as little incline to follow those alleged reform- 
ers who promise to bring on a new future of women by mak- 
ing her the rival of man. We already acquiesce in all rea- 
sonable efforts to rid her of legal and social burdens — to 
secure to her due rights of person, property and employment. 
We believe that a much wider field should be opened for her 
gifts, and that many branches of art both useful and ornamen- 
tal have been wrongly closed against her. At the same time 
she is herself and not man, and she is made less effective then 
instead of more so by training her to imitate man either in 
speech, manner, or costume. We believe in the petticoat as 
an institution older and more sacred than the Magna Charta ; 
and although in these days of boundless skirts we can not 
exactly say that we hope its shadow may never be less, we 
do honestly believe that its dominion is coeval with that of 
true civilization, and that man loses the only authority that 
can effectually tame him when woman loses the delicacy 
of mind and costume that marks her as his counterpart and 
not as his rival. The masculine school of woman's rights 



AMERICAN GIRLS. HI 

reformers have hurt the sex whom they profess to befriend, 
by disparaging the traits most characteristic of their nature, 
and giving them a certain boldness and hardness that fail 
of hemg manly and are ashamed of being womanly. For 
our part, we are willing to own honestly the mutual depen- 
dence of the sexes, and their duty to bless each other by 
being what God has made them. We men can have no 
true heart or home without a good woman's blessing, and 
no gift of fortune or favor seems blessed until a wife, or 
daughter or mother smiles upon it as woman only can 
smile. Why may not she honestly return the sentiment, 
and say that a woman never finds her true sphere until, in 
some relation of life, and chief of all in her own home, a true 
man's wisdom and strength harmonize with her trusting 
affection and quick perception ! She will own this truth, 
and she is too sagacious not to see that she loses her hold 
on man the moment that she begins to rival him by 
stentorian speeeh or by pantalooned strides. But God's 
providence is a better teacher than we can hope to be, and 
-ffis wisdom is proved by the lot of the most obstreperous 
champions of womans rights. The mother silences the 
Amazon, and the female agitators and orators of 
the pulpit and the rostrum appear at the cradle very much 
as other women; and the closed pulpit and the silent ros- 
trum are signs not of mob violence but of Nature's gentle 

law. 

Although not agreeing with the ascetic or the radical as 
to the means of emancipating woman from the yoke of 
marriage, we do believe that much may and should be done 



112 AMERICAN LIFE. 

to secure to her a larger self-reliance and usefulness, to train 
her to be energetic without being masculine, and so to rule 
her education as to give her truer dignity and freedom 
whether married or single. The same social progress that 
will make marriage more practicable and hopeful will make 
single life more dignified, and without believing in any 
social nostrums that shall at once cure all domestic ills, we 
are convinced that due thought on the part of earnest pa- 
rents and teachers, preachers and authors, can work out a 
better day for the destiny of our daughters. We need to 
apply the first princijries of good sense to the current 
modes of living, and demand some other sanction than 
mere fashion for the style of expense which we think au- 
thoritative. The matter of dress, furniture, house building, 
servants, entertainments, and all the household economies, 
that have so much to do with the destiny of woman, need 
to be thoroughly revised, and a substantial check j)ut to the 
extravagance that is putting the yoke of nominal poverty 
upon young women of moderate means, and shutting them 
out from the comforts of a true home, while it burdens the 
nominally rich with constantly increasing competitions and 
discontents. Good taste may do much toward checking 
extravagance, and we seriously believe that a more artistic 
eye would often lessen by one-half the cost of dress and fur- 
niture, and save our daughters from the barbarous folly that 
sacrifices true beauty to mere expensiveness. It may 
cost something too much to dress handsomely, yet it is 
clear that the best-dressed women do not spend the most 
money on their clothes, and that they who are most likely 



AMERICAN GIRLS. 



to ruin their husbands by their monstrous bills at the jew- 
elers or silk and laee stores, generally suceeed more m nmta- 
ting the fashion-plate of our magazines and the windows of 
our fancy stores, than in presenting a fairer image of femi- 
nine humanity deeked with the pearl of greatest pnee. It 
will be a day worth noting in the calendar when woman 
emancipates herself from the yoke of vulgar fashion, and 
when good taste and true beauty, not the scale of mere 
espensiveness and rarity, preside over her wardrobe and 

drawing-room. 

The basis of all true reform, however, must be deepe 
than taste or sentiment. It must be in character hat 
finds its best treasure not in the accidents **»**£ 
stance of being, and believes with the Master that life doe 
not consist in the abundance of things possessed. The 
g ood old Christianity that has stood by the daughters of the 
Church through so many struggles is to stand by them stil 
in the peculiar crisis of onrnew ages. The problem once wa 
to save woman from the hand of barbaric lust and place 
her under the protection of the sanctuary, and the problem 
was solved. The problem now is, how to save her from the 
yoke of modern materialism, and to secure to pure el- 
and spiritual faith a respect and influence that the world is 
now eager to monopolize for wealth and ostentation. This 
problem, too, will be solved, and they who solve it under 
God's law, and with Christ's grace, will be the best benefae- 
tors of our daughters. 



VI. 

Fortune. 



FORTUNE. 117 



FORTUNE. 

rpHE old idolatries have passed away, and their statues 
- 1 - and temples are little now but dust. The few shrines 
that remain show the defeat of paganism more signally 
than the shrines that have vanished. The crumbling walls 
of the empty Parthenon record the downfall of Minerva on 
the Acropolis of Athens, and the rejuvenated Parthenon, 
now crowned with the cross, celebrates daily at Rome the 
triumph of Christianity over the heathen gods. Yet on one 
point the world is about as idolatrous as ever, and invokes 
one mysterious name about as superstitiously as when tem- 
ples were built to the goddess Fortuna and her various 
symbols, the rudder, the wheel, the globe, the horn of 
plenty, and the wings — indicated her fitful temper and her 
various gifts. Now, as of old, the multitude crowd every 
place where Fortune divides her frowns and favors. No 
matter what the place or the auspices, however mean or 
majestic — whether a raffle in a grog-shop, among greasy 
tipplers, or a card-table in a gamester's brilliant pandemo- 
nium, with dainty gentlemen and perhaps jeweled ladies 
for players ; whether a dpg-fight for pennies in a filthy eel- 



118 AMERICAN LIFE. 

lar, or a horse-race, with thousands of pounds at stake, on 
grounds famous as the haunts of the beauty and chivalry 
of centuries — wherever Fortune holds her court, she is sure 
to find ready suitors. In peace and war she still keeps her 
prestige ; and when no battle compels combatants to watch 
for her fitful signals, she hangs up her banner in the busy 
streets of trade, and solid men, who are not to be caught by 
the shining wheel at the lottery-office, may be entrapped at 
once by the specious bulletins of the stock-board, and give 
their money for that which is not bread. 

But apart from all tropes and figures, do we not all seri- 
ously recognize the fact, which was of old so superstitiously 
regarded by the idolaters of Fortune — the fact that there 
is in human destiny a wide margin of apparent chance, and 
that, in all our enterprises, there is another party quite as 
powerful as human will — a mighty and mysterious power, 
which decrees that the battle is not always to the strong, 
nor the race to the swift, neither yet bread to the wise, nor 
yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men 
of skill, but time and chance happen to all ! Never more 
than now have our people been impressed with the power 
of time and chance ; for no man among us can live a year 
without decided proofs that his welfare is not wholly in his 
own keeping, and that changes have come upon the most 
sagacious from causes alike beyond their foresight and con- 
trol. With our life for our text, let us then consider the 
turns of Fortune, and their lesson. It will be best to speak 
first of the # field in which Fortune plays her part, that we 



FORTUNE. 119 

may the more clearly see how men bocome her dupes, and 
how they may become her masters. 

I. The field of fortune — where and what is it ? Surely 
it is every where, all about us and within us ; in every 
sphere of nature, society, and business. This field, how- 
ever, has an impassable limit on either side — a limit be- 
yond which chance has no power. The one boundary is 
the. Impossible, the other is the Inevitable. Whatever in the 
very nature of things can not be, and whatever in the very 
nature of things must be, is of course beyond the sphere of 
contingency, and, as absolutely fixed, is dismissed from our 
hopes and fears. Thus, it is certain that we must die, certain 
that we can not stop the motion of the globe, and no man 
in his senses tries to escape either form of necessity — the 
necessity that is expressed by the words " inevitable " and 
"impossible." But how wide is the margin between the 
two — that broad field of possibility and probability in 
which most of the work of our fife is done, and our loss 
and gain, joy and grief, are decided ! As soon as any prize 
seems within our possible reach, it engages our attention ; 
and as soon as the possibility becomes probability, the prize 
is sought as an object of reasonable enterprise. It interests 
us most when the issue between hope and fear is nearest 
the crisis, or when it is about half-way between the limit 
of impossibility and the limit of certainty, and the interest 
flags the moment we see that it can not be ours, or that it 
must be ours. So true is it that complete success has some- 
thing of the nonchalence of utter defeat, and the fox who 
has all the grapes to himself is apt to think as little of them 



120 AMERICAN LIFE. 

as the fox who thinks them sour because he can not get 
them. So true is it that with most of Fortune's favors, 

rt The lovely toy, so fiercely sought 
Hath lost its charm by being caught ; " 

so true it is that whatever ceases to excite our anxiety- 
ceases to have the highest zest. Therefore it is that so 
much of our life is at the mercy of what is called chance, 
and in the field of fortune we find our work as well as our 
play. 

Strictly speaking, of course there is no such thing as 
chance ; for with the Almighty Mind there can be nothing 
casual or fortuitous, and all things are known to the All- 
seeing One. But to us all things are casual that are 
unknown ; and whatever can be, or may probably be, is to 
our mind somewhat a matter of chance. In the region 
of uncertainty chance ranges, and the region of uncertain- 
ty covers the great portion of our actions, hopes, and 
fears. The boundaries of the unknown are, indeed, in 
some respects, lessened by the progress of science, art, 
travel, and observation ; yet, when one mystery is ex- 
plored another rises in the distance, and there probably 
never was an age when thinking men so felt and acknowl- 
edged the mystery of the universe and its life as in this 
age of boasted illumination. "We sometimes boast of 
understanding Nature, and so mastering her laws as to 
predict, if not to control, her phenomena ; but how signally 
nature baffles us still, and in winds, waters, heat, cold, 



FORTUNE. 121 

calms, storms, earthquakes, lightnings, health, disease, the 
mighty mother is taking us knowing ones by surprise very 
much as of old when her colossal image was set up in 
the sands by the great pyramids, and that face of stone, the 
Sphinx, propounded to all passers-by the great riddle of 
time. Knowing as we boast of being, every day is a sur- 
prise from the elements in some respects, and last winter's 
cold, and this summer's heat, come to us from a power that 
all our philosophy can as little predict as control. Our 
whole life bears witness of the uncertainties of nature, and 
the elements constantly make their mark upon us, now in 
the vexation of an influenza, and now in the terrors of the 
cholera, now in a fire and now in a shipwreck. 

Our human nature surely is not exempt from the uncer- 
tainties of the material world. If winds and waters, 
vegetation and animals, have moods and changes that we 
can not predict, is it easier to predict the moods of man or 
of woman ? It was well that Fortune was represented in 
the human form ; for all chances gather around and within 
our poor humanity, and there is no contingency of nature 
or events that does not in some way act upon or from our 
human life. We have something of the whole universe 
within us— from the earth in our bones to the electric and 
magnetic force that flashes along our nerves; while to the 
mysteries of nature we add the mystery of our own mind, 
which surprises us sometimes more than it does our neigh- 
bors. Certainly there is a large region of the unknown in 
human thoughts, feelings, and actions ; so that when we 
forecast our destiny, we think, perhaps, above all things, 

F 



122 AMERICAN LIFE. 

more anxiously of the issues of our own dispositions and 
the conduct and character of other men. Others may harm 
us or help us much, and our fortunes and happiness de- 
pend much upon what our associates in business or friendship 
shall do or fail to do for us. Fortune was represented hu- 
man, and also as a woman ; not, indeed, as a giddy girl but 
as a matron, her statue implying, not perhaps what our 
modern life so often shows, that married women are the 
fastest of their sex, but the deeper fact, that sensibility and 
experience, like a woman's and a mother's, have much to 
do with deciding and appreciating the turns of human 
welfare. The in-door as well as the out-door side of life 
thus comes in for its share of notice, and Mother Fortune 
speaks to us of all changes in the heart and the home as 
well as in the market and the state. Who like a mother 
can feel the good and ill that come from or to our mutable 
humanity ? The mother, if a worldling, fosters and shares 
the false ambition of the whole family; and if a true wo- 
man, she is the heart of all their goodness, and shares all 
their joy and grief. This year's experience in the Old 
Wprld and the New, in peace and war, in business enter- 
prises and in household changes, is full of lessons in this 
world's chances — full of proofs that not only in nature but 
also in mankind there is a great margin of contingency. 
Strange developements of character have been more startling 
than any changes of the elements, and unexpected heroism 
and unexpected treachery have made more mark upon the 
year than the plenty of the harvests or the outbreak of 
earthquakes and tornadoes. Nay, the moods of men have 



FORTUNE. 123 

been at the bottom of the most astounding events; and the 
war in Germany and the panic thronghont Europe and Amer- 
ica come fromfits of thonght and feeling, which in the world 
of mind, are qnitc as mysterious as the tides and storms, 
of electricity and magnetism in nature. 

So nature and man combine their uncertainties to give 
Fortune her field, and what we call the times is the rec- 
ord of her movements. The times! Who shall under- 
take to enumerate the host of contingencies that form and 
swell that marvelous tide upon which we are all floating . 
Who, least of all, shall presume to foretell what the tunes 
shall be? Let us contrast the opening of 1857 with the 
opening of 1858, and acknowledge the vanity of human 
expectations in that great financial revolution. It is hard 
to read the year backward, and explain the causes of events, 
now that the consequences have developed them m a 
measure. Who can say that he could read the yearforward 
or tell its results in advance ? The most sagacious practi- 
cal men saw no great crisis near at hand, and the business 
community had all sail set as for pleasant weather when 
the storm broke upon them in a general wreck. Some, 
indeed, foreboded evil, and are always foreboding it. but 
who predicted any thing like the state of things now real- 
ized ? Perhaps most thoughtful men expected a degree ol 
financial pressure, but who expected such a crash? Who 
could tell what contingency would cheek the rising expan- 
sion of trade, and hke a chill wind bring down the 
air-castles that the sunshine has been building upon 
the rarefied summer vapors? The turn of the financial 



124 AMERICAN LIFE. 

times depends upon the adjustment of balances in trade, 
and when the balance is doubtful a slight cause may destroy 
the equilibrium, as the leap of a chamois or the wing of an 
eagle may unsettle the nicely-poised mountain boulder, and 
carry ruin and death into the peaceful Alpine valley. Who 
shall tell when the balance of trade passes the line of 
safety, or when the ' foot of the chamois or the wing of 
the eagle shall throw it from its poise ? There are always 
prophets enough after the event has happened ; but they 
who most sagaciously read the signs of things to come, 
most modestly own the short-sightedness of man and the 
vanity of human expectations. If any wiseacre claims 
prophetic honors, let him test his inspiration by telling 
what will be the price of money, or merchandise, or 
lands in one year; or let him tell us the news of the 
next steamer, or the issue of the next Presidential elec- 
tion. We commend to our prophets the wisdom of the 
new Spiritualist seers, who confine their foresight to 
events that have happened — predict to the believing 
neophyte who his father was, and what his own name is 
— and as to future events or distant occurrances are as wise 
as the wooden tables that rap out their mystical communi- 
cations. Who could foretell the issue of our great war- 
fare, or predict the long disapp ointment and the final 
victory, the downfall of so many commanders and the 
rise of Sherman and Grant ? No, we are not prophets ; 
and we must all own that in the times there is a region of 
contingency that baffles the keenest scrutiny, and that 
though there is, as Kossuth said, a logic of events which 



FORTUNE. 125. 

the wise man reasons out, wise men, like Kossuth himself, 
have invariably failed to reason them out fully, and are 
constantly surprised, like common men, by unexpected ill 
and good. Open the last newspaper, and the eye, by the 
merest glance at the names and topics treated, needs little 
moralizing to note the constant chances of time and the 
short-sightedness of human expectation. The atlantic 
cable has brought us revelations as strange as romantic, 
and we stand amazed at the new aspect which Bismark's 
pluck and genius have given to the map of Europe. Nay, 
the mere record of marriages and deaths is of itself lesson 
enough, and tells as much of the vicissitudes of human life 
as the price-current tells the vicissitudes of trade. Over 
each cradle and over each grave the Fates keep their 
watch ; and when we ask what shall be this new life, or 
what has been that departed life, we know full well that 
the time and chance that write so much of the epitaph 
on the grave will write quite as much of the career of the 
little sleeper in the cradle. 

II. So powerful is the combination of chances that men 
call Fortune ; and it is a serious question how we shall 
meet its force. Deny its existence or importance we may 
not, for all history and life are witness that, mighty as hu- 
man will may be, it is not the only arbiter of our destiny, 
and that circumstance is a mighty element in our lot. Meet 
it we must, either wisely or foolishly ; and a glance at the 
freaks of Fortune with human folly may help us to the wis- 
dom that is a match for her caprices. Observe her dupes, 



126 AMERICAN LIFE. 

that we may better know her masters. Her dupes are of 
two chief classes, who differ from each other partly by 
native temperament and partly by diversity of experience, 
according as hope or fear predominates, and they become 
madcaps or cowards under her smiles or frowns. 

They who are won by her smiles are not the less her 
dupes, and more victims have been made by her favor than 
her frowns. First among her madcaps comes the gamester, 
who loves hazard for its own sake, and leaves care and toil 
to plodding drudges while he waits on Fortune's golden 
wheel. No matter what may be the gamester's implements, 
whether cards or dice, the cock-pit or the race-ground, the 
election returns or stock market, he is always the same per- 
verse character. His error is in regarding chance, not 
as the incident, but the main element, if not the whole of 
welfare, and risking all upon the issue of his game. His 
mischief is that he produces no value, and moreover fosters 
a spirit that discourages industry and unsettles moral prin- 
ciple. If' there is an element of chance in all business, the 
distinction is, that in legitimate business chance is the inci- 
dent, and, not as in gambling, the issue turns upon substan- 
tial probabilities, and not upon fitful possibilities. Every 
gambling hell, therefore, stands apart from legitimate trade, 
and has affinity only with those forms of traffic that create 
no value, and give market to no value, but merely feed the 
fire of an unwholesome and, in the end, ruinous gaming. 
Arithmetic shows the gambler's folly, and experience proves 
that his game is, in the end, as ruinious to fortune and char- 
acter as to sobriety. 



FORTUNE. 127 

Let the gamester pass, yet not without leaving with us 
some wholesome hints for a type of character not less dan- 
gerous, if far less repulsive than he. The schemer, or specu- 
lator, is a more decent and plausible character ; and although 
not inviting us to the card-table or the horse-race, he offers to 
show us the road to fortune or fame without the old-fash- 
ioned process of thought and labor. We suffer much from 
this race, and many who are wise enough to escape their 
enticements, and not to stake all upon their visions, share 
in the general ruin which their counsels bring. If all who 
have lost their property within a year, by consequence of 
schemes that have offered boundless wealth without careful 
toil or persistent enterprise could be gathered together, no 
edifice would hold the multitude ; and no man among us is 
so merry as not to mingle a tear of pity with his censure of 
their folly. An element of scheming indeed, belongs to our 
nature ; but woe to the man whose schemes turn upon fit- 
ful chances, not upon well-studied probabilities and well- 
adjusted plans of action. There is an element of imagina- 
tion, indeed, in every sound man, and invention belongs to 
sober business as well as to poetical creation or mechanical 
ingenuity. But the sound man's visions turn upon facts 
and principles, not upon games and hazards. His inven- 
tions come to him under the clear ray of experience and in- 
sight as by light from above, and he does not run after every 
will-o'-the-wisp that shapes its morbid gases into the guise 
of a star, and shines to beguile and bewilder, not to enlight- 
en its followers. There are few subjects upon which the 
world needs more light than upon the distinction between 



128 AMERICAN LIFE. 

wild scheming and practical invention and discovery in the 
fields of enterprise. There is more false fancy in many a 
bank or counting house than in most poets' garrets; 
and Wall Street might sometimes dispute with Blooming- 
dale the palm of being the haunt of moon-struck dreamers. 
We all, perhaps, share in the schemer's visions, and, in our 
own way, cherish our pet castles in the clouds. Look well 
to it that they do not cost us our firm footing upon the 
earth, and our firm seat in our solid homes ! 

If scheming, like gaming implies a certain fever of the 
fancy and sensibility, adventure adds to these a certain 
element of daring, and the adventurer has about him some- 
thing of the romance that always attaches to a daring will. 
WTiat a charm always attaches to the soldier of fortune, 
and something of the same charm attaches to those who 
carry the same spirit into business, statesmanship, and even 
religion. Adventurers have had more than their fair share 
in governing the world, and, from the days of Nimrod 
to those of William Walker, from Mohammed's time to 
Brigham Young's, filibusterism has been a power in the 
State and the Church. In our day it appears in every path 
of trade, and the sobriety of business is constantly distur- 
bed by courage enlisted in the service of folly or fanaticism- 
We need a new Cervantes to give a quietus to the mad 
knight-errantry of money-making and land-stealing; and, 
if the truth were known, we might see all around us rue- 
ful Don Quixotes, whose daring had begun the wild adven- 
ture, and coarse Sancho Panzas, whose longing stomachs 
had enlisted in the knight's hopeful service, and found but 



FORTUNE. 129 

poor fare and beatings as their part of the booty. Such 
adventure differs from fair enterprise in its spirit and object ; 
in its spirit which mistakes audacity for true courage ; and 
its object, which dares danger for the sake and not in spite 
of the risk. There is adventure, indeed, in all enterprise ; 
but true enterprise seeks the well-known good through 
paths of peril, sure of the reward of fidelity if not of success. 
Enterprise is willing sometimes, to lead the forlorn hope in 
face of death itself; and death itself, that defeats the 
end, does not defeat the spirit or break the power of the 
•deed. Mere adventure belongs to the madcaps who are 
giddy under Fortune's smiles ; true enterprise counts well 
her chances, and braves them for a prevailing hope from a 
sober purpose. 

Such are Fortune's madcaps — the gamester, the schemer, 
the adventurer — who are so crazy for Fortune's favor as 
to lose sight of the blanks in her lottery, and to risk all for 
her prizes. A sanguine temperament may combine with 
certain successes to fever their blood ; and we confess to a 
certain liking to the whole class in comparison with the 
opposite extreme ; so much more amiable to us is too much 
hope than too little, and we could forgive these madmen 
easily, if their only failing was looking too much on the 
bright side. But we must remember that nothing is in the 
end so disheartening as false hope; and the madcap, when 
beaten, may be the most arrant of cowards ; and the spend- 
thrift, when beggared, may be the meanest of churls. 
Glance now at Fortune's cowards, and they swarm be- 
fore us a motley yet mighty procession. There is the 

F2 



130 AMERICAN LIFE. 

lounger bolstering up his natural laziness by fear of the 
risks of labor, and doing nothing because he is not sure of 
gaining every thing. In his basest form he is the sluggard, 
sinking into an idiocy of the will quite as abject as the 
fool's idiocy of the wits, and losing all the prerogatives of 
humanity except the genius for sitting and attaining such 
proficiency in this as to tire out the everlasting hills in 
sedentary talent. The sluggard may be stupid, but not 
innocent ; and some of the worst curses of humanity come 
from his stagnant blood. Little removed above him is the 
lounger of a daintier class, the idler about town, whose 
finances are as much a problem as the quadrature of the 
circle, the philosopher's stone, or perpetual motion ; for no 
man can tell how he lives, always spending and never earn- 
ing. Sometimes the lounger is a youth of fortune, and the 
interest of the problem changes, and the only solution of 
his aimless conduct may be the theory that his filial affec- 
tion does not allow him to be engrossed with any useful 
occupation, lest he might not be ready at the proper time 
to put on mourning for his deceased parent, and to open 
with filial promptness the good father's grave and last will 
and testament. 

With more sensibility, and less sloth, the croaker follows 
the lounger, and is as slow in good works, but not in words, 
as he. The croaker's talk is constantly of mischances; 
and if he sj:>eaks of the horn of plenty, he says nothing of 
the fruits and flowers in its capacious depth, but points out 
its little end. Whatever his theme — be it health, proper- 
ty, society, pleasure, humanity, religion — he is forever 



FORTUNE* 131 

groaning over the miseries of men ; and if his predictions 
are sometimes right, it is because he is generally wrong, 
just as a clock that always points at the midnight hour is 
sure to be right when midnight comes round again. Let the 
croaker go, for the air is heavy and stifling with his pres- 
ence. True indeed it is that our life is often troubled, and 
our burdens are heavy; but why be forever groaning over 
the sad fact ? If we would march well through ill to good, 
we must march by music, not by groans ; and the harder 
the road the braver and cheerier should the music be. 

"We like better that highest specimen of the cowards of 
fortune, the recluse — although we are very far from liking 
him altogether ; for he makes the sad mistake of trying to 
get out of the world because it is not perfect, and of risk- 
ing nothing that he may lose nothing. In one of his forms 
he is the recluse from business, determined not to run its 
risks, and forgetting that he may be risking the best of his 
goods, his usefulness, and his mental health. Or he maybe 
the recluse from domestic ties, resolved not to marry be- 
cause women are not angels, children are plagues, and mar- 
riage is a lottery full of blanks, forgetting that he may be 
by himself and not have an angel for a companion ; that 
moody selfishness is more a plague than roguish little boys 
and girls ; and that he may not take a chance in Hymen's 
lottery, and yet have a miserable blank in his own loneli- 
ness. In his highest form, that of the meditative student, 
the recluse is not blameless ; and he who quits the world to 
find wisdom in solitude, shuts out the best light when he 
shuts the door upon actual life and our poor struggling 



132 AM^ICAN LIFE. 

humanity. He meditates best who has felt the touch of 
reality and moved among men and things, and the world's 
great thinkers have been workers among the world's great 
/acts. If care and the world bring some annoyance, this is 
better than visionary dreaming ; and a little discomfort is 
necessary to keep a man awake, and feel duly for the pinch in 
other men's fortunes. We always admired the sagacity of 
the pilgrim who vowed with his companion to travel on 
foot to Jerusalem with peas in his shoes, but who took 
the precaution to boil his peas, and thereby display an 
ease of motion quite unaccountable to his limping com- 
panion. It is foolish to borrow trouble, and equally fool- 
ish to shun the trouble that fairly belongs to us in our own 
time and place in the world. We are wiser and better 
for some anxiety and trial, and all the true sages and saints 
have needed a little spurring from some thorn in the flesh 
or fortune, to keep them awake to the highest light and 
up to the highest mark. The great poets have been 
heroes, and the last resort, if we seek any of their inspira- 
tion, is the coward's part, or running away from our own 
post among men. The coward, whether lounger, croaker, 
or recluse, is like the madcap, the dupe of Fortune, and not 
master of her chances nor a match for her freaks. 

III. The only master of her chances is the truly practical 
man, who is neither madcap nor coward, and proof alike 
against her smiles and her frowns. Consider in what man- 
ner it is that the practical man is a match for fortune, and 
able to meet and master her on her own ground. 

He first of all brings to his aid the force of a sound judg- 



FORTUNE. 133 

ment, and in its light he notes calmly and keenly the goods 
and ills at stake, and studies carefully the best way to shun 
the ill and seize the good. He is strong at once from this 
very point of view, and because forewarned he is forearmed. 
His judgment, observant of substantial good, is wisdom ; 
and as studious of the best means to win that good, it is 
prudence. With wisdom and prudence for his counselors, 
he judges Fortune's threats and promises by a scale of sub- 
stantial values, and measures the way to the true value by 
a scale of reasonable probabilities. So he escapes a world of 
follies and tricks. Not in the gambler's madness nor the 
lounger's alarms, but with firm, yet cautious eye, he scans 
the prizes to be gained or lost, and chooses prudent means 
to wise ends. The great wilderness of uncertain chances is 
no longer a wilderness to him ; for he knows to what point 
he is to travel, with wisdom for his star and compass, and 
with prudence for his pathfinder and guide. To him, thus 
wise and prudent, there is a gradual opening of the fact 
that there is over all chances a prevailing law, and over the 
combinations of events, as over the revolutions of the 
globe, there is a presiding purpose. Probabilities become 
to him clearer and clearer ; and in his own vocation, as well 
as in the great mission of life, a light shines upon the road 
that he is to tread, until its dim shadows vanish into day. 
He is not, indeed, infallible ; for to err is human : but he 
has studied chances till he has found the main chance, and 
in his ruling policy the element of certainty is so combined 
with the element of risk, that the risk serves to quicken and 
vitalize the whole combination — as the oxygen in the at- 



134 AMERICAN LIFE. 

inosphere, in itself so inebriating and consuming, gives 
spirit and life when mingled in moderate proportion with 
the more solid and nutritious nitrogen. To change the fig- 
ure, he aims to live and work in the temperate zone of 
sound sense and solid strength, and he is not in danger of 
running off into tropical fevers or polar icebergs, for he is 
content to be warm without being burned, and to be cool 
without being frozen. 

To judgment the practical man adds fortitude, which is 
the heart's master of the ups and downs of fortune as judg- 
ment is the head's mastery. Fortitude, we suppose, in its 
derivation, carries this idea ; and a man of fortitude is he 
who is equal to either fortune. Fortitude can suffer and 
can dare, appearing as patience under the ills that must be 
borne, and as courage against the ills that must be sur- 
mounted. By patience and by courage the practical man is 
mightily armed as with shield and sword — with the one 
receiving the blows that he can not shun, and with the 
other pressing on against his foe. Patience and courage, the 
one teaching us what we must calmly bear, and so ridding 
us of a host of vain and wasting repinings — the other call- 
ing out our best powers, and cheering us bravely on to our 
work. He is conqueror of ills inevitable who calmly bears 
them, and he is conqueror of ills not inevitable who boldly 
braves them. In all spheres of life we need both, for we 
must all bear defeats and ought all to win victories. Rome 
indeed boasted, that when Fortune entered the Eternal 
City she laid aside her wings ; but surely, if Rome took 
from Fortune her fickle wings, it was only by teaching the 



FORTUNE. 135 

patience and courage that conquer by endurance as by dar- 
ing, and the true Roman fortitude won back the fitful god- 
dess by daring to do without her smiles. 

To judgment and fortitude add fidelity, and our list of 
the forces of the practical man is complete. Fidelity, with 
single eye and persistent purpose, presses on to its aim, and 
wins the best success, not only because in the end it secures 
the largest amount of good, but because it is in itself suc- 
cess. He who does the best that he can, according to his 
measure of wisdom and prudence, patience and courage, is 
a successful man. In the long-run the most substantial 
goods are his. When he succeeds, his success is not shame, 
and when he is shipwrecked — as the best masters some- 
times are — his wreck is better trophy than the pirate 
cruiser's flaunting flag, that ows its safety to its inhuman- 
ity; and all true men say of fidelity defeated, what even the 
worldling Napoleon said of the convoy of brave prisoners 
after a battle: "Honor to the brave in misfortune." Fidel- 
ity defeated is on the way to success, and in all ventures 
that are worthy, character is the best part of capital. 

Judgment, fortitude, fidelity — by these the practical 
man masters Fortune in spite of her changing chances. 
He will succeed, and can not be put down. His success 
will be the best, although it may not be what the world 
calls the largest. In business he may not have the largest, 
but he will have the best, fortune, from his gains, though 
limited, he will win the best good. In the professions 
he may not gain the largest honors, but he will win the 
truest usefulness and peace. When the sod is put on his 



136 AMERICAN LIFE. 

grave, men shall say, " Well done, good and faithful ser- 
vant ; " and the voice from heaven shall not refuse its 
Amen. His success will have height as well as breadth, 
and every good that comes to him will lift up his faith and 
affections toward the throne of God, while it widens his 
earthly domain. 

In our public halls and libraries we may meditate upon 
the struggle with Fortune, as if in the Temple of History 
and of Human Life. The statues of true men . in those 
halls, and the thoughts and deeds of so many generations 
recorded upon those shelves, press the subject home upon 
our thoughts, and bid us meet our chances as they met 
theirs. May we not take a wholesome hint from the 
solemn past for the better education of our children and 
the method of our living ? 

In our too-easy kindness to our children are we not some- 
times more cruel than kind, and do we not educate them 
as if there were nothing but prosperity on earth,* and For- 
tune had all smiles and no frowns? Would not our 
daughters be nobler women if more of the household 
utilities were united with the showy graces of their culture, 
and they were taught to think it a better destiny to share 
and lighten a true man's hardships than to be pampered by 
a churl's abundance ? Do we not, Americans, sometimes 
so magnify the term Lady as to forget the better word 
Woman, and so pet this world's dainty Ladyhood as to 
slight the. true Womanhood that God hath made in his 
own image ? Our sons, too, we belittle and enfeeble by 
over-indulgence ; and even when we devote them to study, 



FORTUNE. 137 

we forget that there are two alphabets and two ways of 
reading. There is an A B C of the spelling book, and an 
A B C of nature and life^; and he who would read the 
great book of facts, must read it with a ready hand as well 
as open eyes. We surely weaken and degrade our sons if 
we do not bring them from the beginning to be wise and 
brave and faithful amidst all the changes of fortune — all 
the ups and+ downs of life. 

And the reigning standard of living, how false to the 
best lessons of experience and the true philosophy of our 
being ! We spread so broad the surface of ease and dis- 
play as to make it hard to rise to manly independence and 
peace, and sacrifice life itself to the shows of living. Less 
show and more substance, less worldliness and more man- 
liness, less luxury and more peace, less vanity and more 
worth, and our lives would rise above the chances of for- 
tune, and our homes rest upon the Rock unchangeable, 
with living water in its clefts. Even then time and chance 
might touch us sometimes rudely ; but it would be under 
God's control, and no longer dupes of Fortune, we become 
children of Providence. 



VII. 

The Flag at Home. 



THE FLAG AT HOiME. ' 141 



THE ^LAG AT HOME. 

TT7E have been for years so accustomed to see our flag 
upon our houses and hanging from our windows, that 
we have almost forgotten how startling a sight it at first 
was, and how deep a lesson it ought to teach us as it floats 
over our home, and thus connects the peace of the family 
with the power of the nation. Before we were, perhaps, 
proud enough of our country and our flag ; but our pride 
of late years was reserved too much for certain state occa- 
sions — as for a military parade, the arrival of a fleet, the 
anniversary of a victory, or the return of the national holi- 
day. Even then we must confess to being sometimes a 
little surfeited with the show of patriotic enthusiasm, and 
the Stars and Stripes, though well enough in their place on 
our national ships and forts, were regarded by dainty eyes 
as a little vulgar when brought too near,. very much as 
Fourth of July fire-craekers are regarded by sensitive ears. 
There was indeed some reason for our distaste at the fre- 
quent obtrusion of the symbol of our nationality ; for it 
was too often made under the auspices of persons more in- 
tent on displaying themselves than on serving the coun- 
try ; and too many of militia musters have been more 



142 AMERICAN LIFE. 

alarming to quiet citizens than to public enemies ; and the 
hereditary bunting that perpetuates the virtue of our fath- 
ers sometimes has been disgraced by the inebriety of the 
sons, being exhibited upon tents whose inmates beat each 
other instead of the invader, and fell more frequently by 
liquor than by bullets. 

Even when our martial enthusiasja has been truly stirred 
by imposing military displays, as so often by the excellent 
citizen soldiery of our great city, it has been very much as 
at some grand scenic effect upon the stage. We did not, 
indeed, doubt that our men were brave, and our nation 
powerful, and our arms invincible, yet we had little thought 
of those troops being part of an actual army, or of claiming 
the flag as part of our own household, after that it had been 
borne so gayly past our window. 

How changed is our feeling now ! The first blow that 
was struck at our national life moved us all to lift up the 
flag upon our houses and churches, as the Crusaders of old 
lifted up the insulted cross. We can remember what a 
thrill went through the heart of the nation when the flag 
was first unfurled upon our church spires ; bufr the precursors 
of this signal appeared upon many a roof below, and the fire 
that blazed aloft upon the towers was kindled from the 
hearths of the people. The feeling that came over the 
nation took us all by surprise, and, like every great experi- 
ence, it neither came by calculation nor can it be analyzed 
by cold criticism, nor comprehended by mere prudence. 
Our life is greater than we know, and whenever its interior 
fountains are stirred, we are reverently to await a revelation 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 143 

instead of prescribing an opinion or conceit. We have 
awaited now many years the developments of our national 
life, and from time to time we have tried to give our views 
of their import. We propose now to extend our observa- 
tions into a somewhat new direction, and speak of the les- 
son of the flag at the window, or the relation between our 
homes and our country, or the life of the family and the 
nation. 

We remark at the outset, that the signs of the times show 
that we are taking the nation home with us as never before, 
and making our public interests a part of our private wel- 
fare. The change is greater than we are at first prepared 
to admit ; for while private welfare tends to become too 
much a very narrow, engrossing, and even selfish object, 
public interest, on the other hand, is too apt to be left in 
the vagueness of remote distance, or to the abstractions 
and the round numbers that are to be found in our tables 
of statistics. It is very easy to say " our country," or to 
repeat the statistics of our population, domain, wealth, and 
lines of communication. But how much more vivid and 
stirring is the word " home," and with the sound of the 
word the eye rests upon or recalls the cherished object it- 
self. We see it, the whole of it, just as itris, precisely so 
large or so small, with exactly so many inmates, of such 
years, features, and voices, with furniture and garden, as 
distinct as in a picture. Perhaps the most distinct and en- 
grossing object of all is she who is generally the ruling 
spirit of the house, the wife and mother. We call our 
country our mother; and so she ought to be, and to some 



144 AMERICAN LIFE. 

extent so she is ; but she does not stand before us so dis- 
tinctly as our mother in blood — as she who bore us, and is 
always bearing with us and forbearing. The mother in the 
house is a very private and somewhat exclusive person, and 
is apt to impart to us something of her own clannishness, 
and to shut us up within the circle of her own affections, 
when she is too generous to tie us to the apron strings of 
her will. Great is the gain, then, when she brings the na- 
tion within her own charmed circle, and gives the country 
a hearty place in the household. Sometimes this adoption 
is not merely an interior feeling but a visible act ; and no 
sight is to us more expressive than that so often seen for a 
few years— the good mother seated at the window from 
which floats the household flag, and watching intently the 
passing regiment, and waving her handkerchief to some 
friend or kinsman, perhaps to her own sons or brothers, as 
they are marching, not on a holiday pageant, but to the 
war, in defence of the life of the nation. The sight of her 
and her daughters brings the whole country nearer to us, 
and the great continent seems to rise before us in living 
personality, and to speak with her voice, and to glow with 
our affections. The nation seems to live in the person of 
its queen, and here every patriotic woman does a great deal 
to animate and impersonate the whole government. 

We undoubtedly suffer something from the absence of 
the traditional symbols and titled personages which em- 
body and concentrate the laws and customs of the old 
nationalities. As yet no person moves us as the Queen 
moves the English when she visits the army, or as the Czar 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 145 

stirs the Russians, when, as autocrat and pontiff at once, he 
rides among the battalions that welcome him with hymns 
as well as cannon. Yet we are gaining in national sym- 
bolism, and never, since "Washington's time, has a Pres- 
ident been greeted as our last martyred chief; and never, 
since time was, has more enthusiasm been rising toward 
any queen than that which is rising in our camps toward 
the noble women who made such sacrifices for the 
health and comfort of our soldiers. She who looks out 
from the window to give the soldiers her blessing as 
they march to the war, should receive that blessing with 
increase when they return. The whole nation should 
and will join in the blessing; for she, the true woman, 
it is who enables the soldier more than any thing else 
to keep his country in his heart as part of his home. 
Surely we are governed far more than we think by tan- 
gible objects and personal associations ; so that it is very 
hard to love our country, and even our religion, apart 
from congenial places and persons. The flag is some- 
thing tangible, and it seems sometimes to have a super- 
natural virtue in rousing patriotism. There is a rever- 
ence for our flag amounting almost to worship; yet 
without some human face or word to go with it, the 
flag is a very insufficient incentive, and the good soldier 
feels its power far more when he receives the silken 
banner at the hands of some fair woman, and sees her 
cheering face wherever he marches, and hears her encour- 
aging voice above all other music. In some way every 
soldier is enabled to interpret his country by some such 

G 



146 AMERICAN LIFE. 

personal association, and so give it a place in his fancy 
and affections, as well as in his reason and conscience. 
The more we do to cherish such associations so much the 
better for the nation, and so much greater is the safe- 
guard against the naiTow individualism and private thrift 
that are so apt to be in the ascendant among us. 

As a people we are much given to arithmetic, and no- 
where on earth is the multiplication-table so widely taught 
and applied as with us. Far be it from us to disparage this 
important document, or to bring down upon our heads the 
wrath of its significant figures, which can gather at a word 
in such ratios that roll up volumes sometimes more start- 
ling than the thunder-clouds. Yet we must modestly 
suggest that the multiplication-table can not do every thing, 
nor even the most important thing. It can multiply the 
unit into thousands and millions, but it can not give us the 
unit itself to start with. It may figure up the number of 
houses in the country, or of men in the army, but it can 
not give us an adequate idea of a single house or a single 
man. In fact, no kind of knowledge is so deceptive and 
unsatisfactory as that which is merely numerical. We 
learn something, but not the chief thing, when we learn 
that we are a nation of thirty millions of inhabitants. We 
learn the great thing only when we are told what 
kind of people they are, and especially what kind of 
a man is to be regarded as the average specimen or repre- 
sentative character of the whole. Whatever tends to 
translate the abstractions of statistics into personal form 
and feature corrects their insufficiency and makes their 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 147 

facts vital. Now, certainly, all household images and asso- 
ciations have this tendency, and the muster-roll of a regi- 
ment begins to mean something to us the moment we 
recognize some familiar name, and remember, perhaps some 
old neighbor or schoolmate whose home we have passed, 
and whose parents, and brothers, and sisters we know. 
The whole army starts into life as it is thus estimated by 
a standard that the heart can recognize, and there is some- 
thing very near to degradation in being known merely as 
one of a certain number, without local habitation or name. 
How repulsive it is, not only to our pride but to our affec- 
tions, to be called number one or number ten instead of our 
own name ; and the prison has no indignity greater than 
that of labeling its inmates numerically, and knowing them 
only by their number, like so many hack horses. Women 
are especially averse to such computation ; and we can not 
imagine any greater affront put upon a circle of stately 
dames or blooming damsels than by omitting their charac- 
teristic names, and slighting their characteristic costume, 
and telling them off by number, as so many hats or umbrel- 
las left in care of the porter. Womanly affection is 
altogether private and personal, and carries its personality 
into public affairs, and helps us, harder and more abstract- 
ed men, to carry it there also. 

Tell a woman, for example, that a thousand men were 
slain in the last battle, and she receives the news with 
amazement, perhaps with horror, yet does not lose her com- 
posure nearly so much as when she hears that one of her 
own acquaintance was among the number; and as she 



148 AMERICAN LIFE. 

thinks of him in the agonies of death, she sees the whole 
thousand who suffered with him, and the many appear be- 
fore her in the one. This is the way, indeed, with the 
human heart, but it comes largely from its home training ; 
and but for this personal and affectionate view of affairs 
public life would lose its personal interest, the country 
would evaporate into an airy abstraction, or sink down 
into a coarse trading copartnership, and the flag would be 
shorn of its best power in being torn away from its allies 
in the household. 

Let us not be narrow in either direction ; and we are to 
shun the extreme of sentimental emotion as the extreme 
of cold calculation. Let us be willing to read the census 
all the more because we look into the house, and the aggre- 
gate numbers will mean all the more to us as we study the 
contents of the separate units that swell into hundreds and 
thousands. We need to take the household and personal 
view of our nation all the more from the fact that we not 
only lack the central court and permanent head that tend 
to bring national life home to the popular fancy, but we 
also share peculiarly in the habit of calculation that is so 
characteristic of our time, and sometimes come near dis- 
placing enthusiasm by prudence, and living personality by 
scientific abstractions. Without going over in theory to 
the Positivist School of Comte, and while retaining our 
nominal spiritual faith, we often virtually adopt his princi- 
ples, and regard our country too much in its mere statistics ; 
not as our benign mother, whom we know and love by 
heart, but as the great farm and storehouse, which we are 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 149 

to estimate by tables of agriculture, commerce, and manu- 
factures. The French Positivist himself found out his 
mistake before he died, and in a measure corrected it by 
that same method that we are recommending ; and Comte, 
who boasted of having reduced every study to an exact 
science, and of being able to read the future as the past by 
his sociological theory, confessed that he learned from a 
single friend more than from all his figures and laws, and 
that without the friendship of a noble woman, with the 
light of her home, he must have been without religion, if 
not a stranger to true humanity. His case is more or less 
our own ; and all public generalities are unmeaning until 
we interpret them by personal affections and bring them home 
to our own hearts. It matters little over how many square 
miles or millions of people our flag waves, if we do not 
connect it with our own household, and feel its protection 
while we are under our own roof. The flag at the win- 
dow thus teaches a great truth, as well as presents a 
glowing symbol ; for it teaches us to study our nation in 
its personal relations, and breathe human life into numer- 
ical abstractions. 

Not only do we thus interpret round numbers by a 
definite point, by the unit that makes all the figures sig- 
nificant, but we have the means of taking an interior view 
of the whole nation, or looking into the life of the people. 
Regarding the nation only in the mass, the view is alike 
indefinite and superficial. If we think of the many, we fail 
to see them definitely, unless we see them one by one ; 
and we fail to see them profoundly, unless we judge them 



150 AMERICAN LIFE. 

one by one, with insight as well as sight. The home view 
of the nation ought to combine these two characteristics, 
and at once give point in our indefiniteness and depth in 
our superficiality. Our army, for example, when thus inter- 
preted, presents itself before us in a wholly new light. 
That we have had a million men in the field is a great fact, 
but of itself it may excite no more emotion than any other 
large numerical statement. Indeed, the largeness of the 
number rather overwhelms than impresses us, and it is im- 
possible to conceive of such a multitude. But put the 
subject in another light. See that regiment marching 
through our streets, and remember that a mother is looking 
from her window to catch the last glimpse of her own son ; 
and as he marches j:>ast and makes the salute that mingles 
filial love with chivalry and patriotism, he gives us a new 
measure of our army. He gives us the unit, not only of 
sight, but of insight — not only of number, but of charac- 
ter. Then remember that there are a thousand such regi- 
ments under our flag, and the ruling motive that led them 
to the field is in great part the same that animates that 
young soldier, and surely we have a most significant and 
instructive view of the whole force at our command. The 
whole host immediately becomes personal and pictorial to 
our eye, and graphic to our fancy and affections. Our loy- 
alty takes a more interior character as we connect the 
pur]30ses of the individual with the institutions and men 
that we are to serve. We ask anxiously how our soldier 
is to be treated alike by friends and foes. We see a good 
officer with other eyes and affections the moment we look 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 151 

upon him as having charge of our personal friends. The great 
battles, discussions, dangers and enterprises of the nation 
thus come home to us, and we are all enlisted by heart in 
the public service, and made spectators of national scenes. 
We really pine for more of such personal associations with 
the destiny of our country, and our statistics of products 
and returns of popular majorities are most dreary until 
centralized and vivified by some commanding personality. 
We yearn for some hero whom we may honor and love, not 
only for our own sake, but for the sake of our mothers, 
wives, and children. Knowing so many characters in the 
national group, and having one or more there who bears 
our own name or hope , we crave the presence of some 
ruling spirit who shall animate all by his own eloquence or 
courage, and ennoble us and our children and homes by his 
own high humanity. Thus the advent of a great man does 
not throw contempt on the mass of the people, but puts a 
soul into the whole ; and the all whom we do not and can 
not know live for the first time for us in the one whom we 
know and do honor. 

In monarchical countries the people are made to take a 
personal interest in common public affairs, and especially 
in great national emergencies, by loyalty to the princes who 
lead them ; and in sober and utilitarian England the sons of 
the Royal family are put into the army and navy expressly 
to bring the public service nearer to the life of the people, 
and to connect the throne with their business and homes. 
Surely a republic ought not to have less enthusiasm, and 
effort should be made to win favor to every branch of 



152 AMERICAN LIFE. 

national interest by identifying it with persons near to the 
popular heart. As we watch the career of the leading men 
among us now, we care for them all the more by our care for 
those whose welfare is committed to their charge ; and we 
rejoice in every victory and mourn at every defeat most 
heartily as we think of the homes gladdened or saddened 
by the issue. We read with different eyes of the deeds of 
Foote, Farragut, Sherman, or Grant, when we think that our 
own or our neighbor's son is in that command ; and should 
the array return with its trophies what bounds could be put 
to our enthusiasm, when love for the soldier in the ranks 
combines with pride in the commander to bring out our 
plaudits, and perhaps our tears ? In some way this principle 
of sympathy is acting upon our whole community as prob- 
ably never before in the history of nations, for never before 
was so large an army gathered on the globe of materials 
that so unite officers and men in the same companion- 
ship, and embody the affections and interests of the whole 
people. Our troops went forth from our homes as no other 
army ever went ; and the bayonet, as well as the sword, was 
borne by men of gentle nurture, who love, and are loved by 
gentle mothers and wives and sisters and daughters and 
Mends. He who wins laurels wins them therefore, in a pe- 
culiar sense, for others as well as himself; and we hardly 
venture to predict the honors and rewards in store for our 
brave leaders when they return from the conflict and are 
welcomed to the homes whose sons have been partners in 
their heroism, even at the cost of wounds or life itself. 
Surely, then, our public life is closely allying itself with our 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 



153 



private life, and the two factors of our national power — the 
elements of command and of obedience — are meeting to- 
gether as never before. 

° We are, undoubtedly, in this way bringing a new methoct 
of observation and judgment to bear upon our rulers and 
officers. We are looking at them not only from the caucus, 
the exchange, the Senate, but from the household; and 
from our windows we are scrutinizing men, manners and 
institutions. The morals of our officers, in the camp and 
the field, are to be canvassed with new closeness, and stern 
judgment is to be passed upon usages and institutions that 
'are now especially in question. North and South, East 
and West are looking out of the window with very sharp 
eyes at each other ; and not only in every newspaper-office, 
but in thousands of private houses, correspondence is going 
on between the people and our soldiers of a degree and kind 
that must tell on public opinion, and even shape the mate- 
rials for history. Our campaigns have annalists such as 
were never before known; and the flag at the window is 
the eloquent symbol of a new element in our nationality — 
that mighty power that has every postal conveyance at its 
command, and enables every man and woman in the land 
to write dispatches to friends everywhere within our lines, 
and to stamp the dispatch with the head of Washington, 
and give it the sanctity of the great nationality that he 
founded. Letters have always been written since the 
human fingers knew their cunning ; but never till now 
have they so united the home and the nation, and made a 
nation's history out of its household affections. Each sec- 

G2 



154 AMERICAN LIFE. 

tion of the country must share in this illustration ; and we are 
ready to believe that the result must be such as to give us all 
a more humane view of each other's dispositions and rela- 
tions — to feel that at heart we may be once more one people, 
and that in some respects the very men who were in arms 
against us are cherishing the very affections and purposes 
that we hold most dear. We have no fondness for the 
rebel chiefs, and find it very hard, sometimes, to keep from 
cursing them before God and man. Yet we may so far en- 
large our view as to discern some elements in their motives 
that are not utterly depraved ; and we surely, in the fullness 
of our solicitude for our own kindred, may remember that 
the human heart is not bound by any political or geographi- 
cal lines ; and our enemy may love and be loved very much 
as we are, and on that very account may be worthy of bet- 
ter usages and laws than those which he insists upon main- 
taining, to the harm of the nation and the scandal of the 
world. His life, too, has its household side, and one, more- 
over, enough like our own to win our sympathy, and enough 
unlike our own to enlist our service in the hope of bettering 
his lot in spite of himself. The flag from our window has 
thirty-four stars on its folds, and shall have we trust and pray, 
no less a number. Our window, therefore, waves a blessing to 
his, and offers him protection under the light of one — nay, of 
all — of those stars, and gives him warning as stern as the 
protection is merciful. 

We have been speaking thus far of the importance of 
taking the nation home with us, or of giving definiteness 
and depth to our public life by looking at it from our do- 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 155 

mestic point of view. But we must not forget the other 
aspect of the subject, nor fail to see the need of taking the 
home abroad with us, and enlarging private feeling and 
interest by large public associations and ideas. If we look 
out of the window to see who are in the street, we must 
expect those in the street to look up to us, and to have 
some control over our thoughts. It will not do to interpret 
every thing from our own personal view, or insist upon giving 
the whole country the tone of our household or the color of 
our spectacles. We certainly have been too much impris- 
oned in our private interests, and we need to enlarge our 
horizon by generous patriotism as well as humanity. If 
the home view of public life is instructive, the public view 
of home life is no less so ; and we do a great deal to cure 
our prejudices and repinings by seeing clearly that our lot 
is bound up with the common lot. If home-life teaches 
the worth of the unit, and enables us to see number one 
with distinctness, and indeed compels us. not only to say 
number two in connubial fondness, and number three, or 
four, or a dozen, in parental tenderness, public life enables 
us to count thousands and millions, and see that we person- 
ally are, after all, but one soul in thirty millions. Now it is 
a great thing really to enter into this thought ; for we are 
prone to a monstrous egotism, and are tempted to take 
it for granted that the nation, if not the universe turns upon 
our personal will or welfare as its centre. What a lesson 
for us it is to remember that this great country at once 
measures our greatness and insignificance, and that we be- 
long to it as but one among the millions, and instead of 



156 AMERICAN LIFE. 

being sure of wealth or luxury under its flag, we must 
share in its trials, and may be compelled to lay down our life 
in its defense ! Look upon the troops in the street or camp 
and consider that each man there has body and soul like our- 
selves, and when wounded or injured he suffers as we must 
do in like circumstances. It may let down our pride some- 
what, but it will exalt our wisdom to know that each de- 
cent man is probably in most respects like ourselves ; and 
that it is utter vanity in us to consider our case so very pe- 
culiar, and that never did man suffer or enjoy as we do. It 
is well sometimes to go into the crowd for the sake of learn- 
ing humility ; and important as it is for each man to pre- 
serve his individuality, he must remember that other people 
are individuals too, and that thousands and millions of them 
quite as much as he need the earth's plenty and God's prov- 
idence. 

There is something indeed at first very chilling in this 
view ; and when we really perceive that we are one of the 
many, that what we are personally going through is but the 
common lot, that what we are tempted to regard as pecu- 
liarly our experience takes place by general laws, and to a 
degree that may be calculated by general averages, we 
are somewhat in danger of losing our faith and courage, as 
if we were crushed under the iron wheels of fatality. It 
certainly gives a startling shock to our exacting sensibility 
to be assured that, on the whole, about the same average 
amount of pain and pleasure, sickness and health, birth and 
death, virtue and vice, and even crime exists year after 
year ; and that even great crises and revolutions do not essen- 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 157 

tially break the laws of historical development, nor univer- 
sally change the human lot. Social statistics do not very 
widely vary from age to age ; and events that mark our 
lives most deeply with joy or grief have something of the 
same range and uniformity as the tides and rains, the heat 
and cold. War and pestilence are not without method 
when observed in the long-run, and, like fevers, they have 
their heats and intermissions. There is a kind of order 
even in disorder ; and the tables of insurance, upon which 
practical men base their calculations and stake millions of 
money, show an average liability to tempests, fires, diseases, 
and accidents. History, it is affirmed, is becoming an exact 
science, and its periods may be defined, like the stages of 
vegetable or animal life. Certainly the more attentively 
we study nature, man, and events, the more are we im- 
pressed with the idea of universal law ; and now, while 
war has come upon us like a whirlwind, we find ourselves 
applying general averages to its issues, and counting the 
probable percentage of death by battle or disease. 

When we reflect upon this prevalence of historical law 
or social average, we are at first liable to be depressed, as 
if we were under the wheels of an iron necessity without 
consideration or mercy. But deeper thoughts must relieve 
this depression, and teaching us to recognize a personal 
intelligence and will beneath or within the system of uni- 
versal law, it prepares us to rise above a blind and inexora- 
ble fate, and gather together as children under the disci- 
pline of the Universal Father. What is universal must 
surely have a providential purpose ; and the generalizing of 



158 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the facts of human life ought not only to enlarge our surface, 
but to deepen our mind and exalt our faith, so as to lead us 
to accept the sufficient universal cause. If all our wishes 
were gratified at once, and the result answered exactly to 
our desire, we might be more than we are now in danger 
of forgetting or denying the overruling spirit; for we 
might readily regard ourselves as the moving power, and 
considering effects, however wonderful, as the work of our 
will, not as the act of God. The universe might seem, as 
the puppet show does to the spectator — all the movements, 
however curious, being all ascribed to the human showman, 
and not to any divine and indwelling mind. There is some- 
thing, therefore, in the union of benignity and universality 
in the divine method that saves us from mere humanism, 
and compels us to own an overruling power which cares 
for us upon principles that sometimes cross our wishes, that 
they may in the end secure the utmost good. 

We may have a fair illustration of the compatibility of uni- 
versal law with personal intelligence and overruling pow- 
er by reverting to our subject. What better expresses 
the antithesis between private feeling and public law than 
the flag at the window ? The window opens into the 
house, where private affections prevail and love appears 
in its most exclusive form. The mother clasps her son to 
her arms as hers, and is slow to believe that any power can 
take him from her side. The flag, on the other hand, sym- 
bolizes the power of national law, and in its defence her 
son enrolls himself in the army and marches away to the 
war. Look upon him as he marches by the window with his 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 159 

regiment, and is there not something in the rhythm of the 
step and the recurrent order of the ranks and companies that 
symbolizes that tremendous law that pervades nature and 
history, and whose recurrent cycles mark the periods of 
planets and ages that march ever on at the word of Him 
whose voice is the harmony of the worlds ? How different 
the movement of the young soldier in the regiment and in 
the house ! In the ranks he has his fixed place, and he 
moves with the many, and advances or retreats, faces about 
or wheels, at the general command, without regard to his 
own wish or will. In the house he is quite at ease, and 
sits or lolls, dances or promenades, plays or reads, as he 
pleases. But who shall say that in submitting to military 
discipline he quits the sphere of free-will and personality, 
and submits to inexorable necessity ? The social will, the 
national mind, is embodied in that discipline, and he finds 
that his spirit rises instead of being crushed by the disci- 
pline of the camp and field ; and even if he is wounded he 
may know that it is under laws that are essential and be- 
nign ; and even if he gives his life for his country he can 
feel that it is better thus to die in a good cause than to 
breath out an ignoble existence upon a bed of dainty indo- 
lence. Whatever may be the philosophy of the fact, the 
fact itself is sure, that the more thoroughly we enter into 
the idea of prevailing law, and submit to the rightful dis- 
cipline, whether human or divine, instead of losing our in- 
dividuality we exalt it, and our personal life is magnified, 
not lost, by being united with the social and civil order or 
the divine kingdom. 



160 AMERICAN LIFE. 

It would be indeed most disheartening if the power of 
law, whether natural, social, or divine, were always, or gen- 
erally, mortifying or destructive. "We know, for example, 
that all men must die, and this necessity, that is decreed of 
God, is often, as of late, hastened by national decrees, and 
thousands fall before their expected time by the fearful 
chances of war. But in order that men may die, it is nec- 
essary first that they should live; and if they live as they 
ought to do, death itself opens into higher life, and a 
universal law, written not only in Scripture but upon the 
human soul, saves us from the dreary sway of materialism 
and the fearful sting of death. The more we try to per- 
ceive and follow this supreme law, and ascend from the 
order of material nature to the higher plane of the divine 
thought and the infinite and eternal love, the greater will 
be our strength and our comfort. In the apparently inex- 
orable march of events we shall hear the music of human- 
ity and of God, that shall stir our hearts with blessed faith, 
and assure us that without the supreme wisdom and will 
not even a sparrow falls to the ground. 

Our flag ought to teach us, as it waves from our window, 
that the public necessity that controls private caprice, and 
sometimes seems to sacrifice private interest, is full of be- 
nign influences and lessons. Let those thirty-four stars 
teach us to discern the higher meaning of our national life, 
as it has been forming for more than two centuries, and 
gathering to itself the truths and powers that all ages have 
been preparing for us as gifts of the Old World to the 
New. A divine order more and more distinctly enunciates 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 161 

itself as the years roll on, and it is evident that, while we 
are scheming and toiling, planting and building for our- 
selves, the Lord of the vineyard and the Master of the 
house is using us for His own far-seeing and majestic pur- 
poses, and uniting our little doings with His own gracious 
and comprehensive plans for this new continent and its 
new civilization. 

To say no more of purely national law, but considering 
the bearing of our private life itself, what is more evident 
than the fact that every true home is under the influence of 
an enlarging and spiritualizing power, whose source is di- 
vine and whose sweep is boundless and unending ? Wher- 
ever there is a Bible or a hymn-book, a sermon or a prayer, 
the divine kingdom is acknowledged, and the flag is but 
the earthly symbol of the spiritual empire that is to be mil- 
itant until it is triumphant. In this way our private life is 
enlarged and evangelized, and our private feelings become 
part of the great and universal Christian conscience. 
When we read the household life of the nation thus, and 
see in it the workings of the moral and spiritual laws that 
are to move God's people for time and eternity, we accept 
them as we accept the laws of nature, the tides, the air, the 
light and heat, the changes of the seasons, and we are 
mightily comforted by the conviction that religion is a 
great social fact as well as a divine revelation. Our family 
is seen to belong to the great family of God, and the flag 
of our civil Union becomes the ready symbol of our higher 
spiritual fellowship. National law, with its duty and privi- 
lege, is seen to be a stepping-stone to the law of the em r 



162 AMERICAN LIFE. 

pire of God, with its truth and grace. Protected at home 
in our national birth-right, we the better understand our 
Christian birth-right ; and the gospel, hymns, prayers, and 
sacraments of religion, as they come home to each of us, 
not only express our personal faith, but join us to the great 
company of brethren and fathers who have gone before us. 
They speak to us in time of need, but of a divine will in- 
stead of a material necessity. Their word is both human 
and divine, joining man's wants with Heaven's fullness in 
everlasting union. We still have the flag at the window, 
and love it all the more because above it we see the snow- 
white banner that shall win the earth to the sway of the 
gentle and the sceptre of the peace-making; for in war it- 
self, war is no permanent end. The most ambitious invader 
professes to make war only to gain thereby a more secure 
peace ; and our war is waged solely to preserve the unity 
of the nation, without which there can be no permanent 
peace on this continent. 

We have, perhaps, taken pretty wide liberty with our 
subject, and moralized a little too freely upon a very com- 
mon thing. There is no danger, however, that the truth 
that is so called for by the times will be too commonplace 
— no danger that public life will be taken too near to our 
homes and hearts, or that our homes and hearts will open 
too generously into fellowship with the nation and with 
mankind. Let us each look from our window wisely, with 
fellow-feeling for every citizen, especially for all who suffer 
in the common cause, not doubting that in this we do much 
to educate our own children to be good citizens, and breathe 



THE FLAG AT HOME. 163 

a temper that shall be the strength and the blessing of the 
land. Let the house be the watch-tower from which we 
observe all that concerns our country, and interpret every 
hopeful event and worthy character with humane feeling 
and personal sympathy. 

Nor let our gaze be wholly passive, but let what we see 
move us to do our part and train our children to do theirs. 
The watch-tower should be also the fortress ; and wherever 
our flag waves, it should be over families that mean to live 
not for self alone but for their neighbor, their country, and 
their race. For good or ill we must share in the common 
lot, and whether we live or die we do not belong to our- 
selves alone. Wave on, then, old banner! Float from 
every frontier fort and sea-girt citidel, every camp, and 
every fleet. When war shall cease and the soldier returns 
to his home, still cheer and stir us in our homes ; and when- 
ever the nation keeps her festivals, float in blessing from our 
windows and our spires, in token of the union between the 
private affections and public spirit of the people, the 
patriotism and religion of the nation, to the end of 
time! 



VIII. 

Learning Statesmanship. 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 167 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 

T CONFESS to having brought home a new sensation, 
-*- and perhaps a new idea — or one new to me, at least — 
from the ballot-box at the late Presidential election. There 
was something in the look and manner of the crowd there 
gathered that was peculiar and most impressive. Nothing, 
or next to nothing, was said, but the great thing was taken 
for granted. I found that just after sunrise, when I expec- 
ted to find the coast clear, so that I could drop my votes 
into the boxes without delay, a long line, not likely to pass 
away under an hour was in advance. The prospect of waiting 
so long without breakfast compelled a retreat. Two hours 
later — when it was said that the crowd would probably 
be the least — I went again, and joined the end of this 
queue of freemen, and in about an hour and a half I reach- 
ed the ballot-box, somewhat naughtily taking comfort in 
seeing the rear-rank as full as when I came, and therefore 
requiring of the new comers the same delay. 

What memorable demeanor in that whole company! 
Every man seemed at once to affirm his own duty and his 
neighbor's equal right. There was no crowding, no bad 



168 AMERICAN LIFE. 

temper, no dispute, no profanity, not even any show of 
partisanship except in the mottoes quietly presented upon 
the placards on the two little stands of the rival vote dis- 
tributors. The person directly in front of me was a hand- 
somely-dressed young man, apparently a merchant, who 
barely indicated his political preferences by modestly saying 
what candidate in his opinion would win the day and the 
White house — a prediction which, as I supposed, proved 
to be wrong, yet was not in the least offensive. Behind 
me stood a man in a plain and well-worn dress, with the 
look of a working-man, quite intelligent and kindly, but 
with something in his face and bearing that said that life 
was not wholly sunshine with him. He said nothing as to 
the candidates yet I felt quite at one with him on the sub- 
ject, and was quite drawn to him when the rain began to 
fall and he held over my improvident head the umbrella 
which he had wisely brought. The only noticeable change 
in our ranks was made by the approach of an easy, smart- 
looking gentleman, who stepped up before my front neigh- 
bor, and took the place" next above, which was vacated for 
him by the occupant, a plainly dressed-man, who fell back 
to the extreme rear. Nobody complained of this arrange- 
ment, by which a leading German merchant thus secured 
an early vote by sending his coachman to keep a place for 
him till he came, for the coachman too was a voter, and 
could have held the place for himself, and nobody was de- 
frauded. On we passed in tranquil order, and all the proof 
I had of the presence of the mighty arm of the law was a 
bland request from one of the policemen near the ballot-box 



I 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 169 

to tell him how long it took for each person to vote on the 
average. In reply to my remark that the time varied, ac- 
cording to the voter's quickness and the number of ques- 
tions put to him, from twenty seconds to about a minute, 
he said that f according to his calculation, ten men voted on 
an average in seven minutes, which would amount to about 
eighty-five an hour — an allowance sufficient to accom- 
odate all the voters in the district between sunrise and 
sunset. 

This simple story of facts is given merely to serve as 
text for the thonghts that are to ]&■ presented. The ques- 
tion comes. What does this mean — what idea, what motive, 
what destiny are before the thousands and tens of thousands 
of people who meet thus quietly, in this great and sometimes 
tumultuous city, in unison with the millions of freemen 
who at the same time, from the Atlantic to the Pacific shore, 
are casting their suffrages that are to decide who shall rule 
the nation with a royal authority, though without a royal 
name, for four years during this fearful civil war and all its 
attendant burdens and anxieties ? It may be said that the 
more than Sunday quiet of the city was owing to the mili- 
tary force at hand to quell riot. But not a soldier was to 
be seen, and no well-informed man can for a moment sup- 
pose that the voters at large needed any such restraint, 
however much it might be called for to keep down a cer- 
tain ruflian class of inhabitants, or look after rebel in- 
truders. I called at noon on the commander-in-chief of 
the National troops, and chatted half an hour with him as 
pleasantly as on any New England Sunday, and was well 

H 



170 AMERICAN LIFE. 

assured that he had no fears of what was coming, confident 
as he was that the people at large meant no ill, and that the 
malcontents and traitors dared do no ill. I confess to being 
greatly comforted by the visit, quite confirmed in the faith 
that the nation is sound and strong, and that the sword is 
in the hands of men, who know and love the law, and will 
not see it trodden under foot. 

The explanation of the marvel of this great election lies 
in the simple fact that our people as never before, went to 
the ballot-box as a nation deeply conscious of the solemnity 
of the issue before the^ and transformed from partisans 
into patriots, and rising above the shifts of politicians into 
the calm attitude of statesmen. We are impressed as 
never before with the truth that our people are learning 
statesmanship, and giving noble fruits of their training. It 
may be, and doubtless is, true that their conduct was deep- 
er than their theory, and their act was wiser than they 
knew. This is the case with all earnest action, and there 
is much in our great impulses that passes our understanding. 
Yet our people can not be accused of acting blindly, and 
never has the discussion of great principles entered more 
largely into public debate than of late. Nor would we ex- 
clude either of the great parties from our commendation, 
for both professed fidelity to the same essential laws, and 
both held themselves bound by the issue of the ballot. 
Nothing better expresses our sense of the spirit of the 
people than an illustration from the great motive powers of 
nature. The atoms and globes are held and moved by 
certain elementary forces, and each particle of the crystal, 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. lf\ 

- each pebble of the globe, each globe of the system reveals 
if we will rightly interpret it, the dominant powers that 
keep the universe in due rest and motion. Pick up a peb- 
ble from the shore, and we can deduce from its history and 
phenomena all the great laws of the heavens. So take a 
voter, and analyze the mind that moves him — and the 
history, idea, and destiny of the nation speak out from 
him at once. Consider somewhat carefully the National 
Idea and its practical development in our Manifest destiny, 
in the light of the late movement of the people. 

What do those millions of men all over the country — 
from New York to San Francisco, from Chicago to New 
Orleans -take for granted but the characteristic idea of 
the nation, of the Many in One, and the One in Many 
Every man feels that he is rightly among the many, under 
a government that claims the many diversities of places, 
persons, and parties, under the unity of its jurisdiction ? 
He has been educated to understand very well the organic 
relation between himself and the nation. In fact, every 
school-boy knows the simple facts that seem to puzzle most 
of the political wiseacres of Europe, and canTead in every 
national election the steps of the process by which the in- 
dmdual is related to the town, the town to the country 
the country to the State, and the State to the Nation! 
Our bright boys and girls too are learning that this complex 
relation has been evolving itself, under God's providence, 
for more than two centuries, or from the very beginning of 
the American colonies, instead of being the result of a 
specific compact. In its present form, indeed, the written 



172 AMERICAN LIFE. 

Constitution shaped our National Union, but by no means 
created it. The Constitution expressed and embodied the 
previous dispositions and life of the people, whom God has 
been forming into a nation, and its authority rests more 
upon the habits and institutions which it completes than 
upon the specific compact which it enacts. We accept the 
compact, but not as a mere bargain between the States, 
that may be set aside at the pleasure of the parties. Our 
people do not believe that any paper of itself creates obli- 
gation, but honor the paper because of the inherent worth 
of the obligation which it recognizes. They believe that 
national life grows ; that it had been growing for centuries, 
under colonial neighborhood, French and Indian wars, Revo- 
lutionary struggles, Confederate articles, Constitutional law ; 
nor did the growth then end, for nothing stops growing 
until it begins to die. The nation has been growing these 
seventy-seven years since the Constitution was formed — 
growing not only in extent but in intent, or in spirit and 
idea, and can not deny this fact without abjuring its own 
life or laying hands upon its own being. Our people are 
feeling as well* as thinking this great truth, and it is idle to 
try to make them believe that their life as a nation rests 
upon arbitary compact or o]3tional partnership, not upon a 
providential evolution and a solemn covenant. They believe 
that nations, like families, are under Divine rule, and that 
civil ties have as much sanctity as household ties between 
those whom God joins and man is not to put asunder. It is 
evident to us that this faith entered largely into the recent 
contest, and more and more do our people insist upon the 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 173 

first article of true American statesmanship, that we are a 
nation, under God — and such, under Him, do we mean to 
continue. 

This conviction expresses itself in the calm assurance 
with which the millions go to the ballot-box without the 
least misgiving, as the nation's right and duty to be and 
to prosper. Distance of place serves but to confirm the 
conviction ; and our hearts beat warmly, but not strangely, 
as we note how closely the remotest regions answer to our 
own pulses, and East and West annihilate space and faction 
at one blow, as loyal word flashes from ocean to ocean that 
the nation is up and doing, and liberty and law walk hand 
in hand together. So far as space is concerned, the national 
domain is practically less in danger of separation than 
when the Constitution was adopted ; and San Francisco is 
nearer New York in thought, aud will be soon nearer in 
exchange of goods, than Boston was in 1789. Chicago is 
nearer New Orleans than the Ohio was to the great Lakes 
at that date ; and the whole country now is one as never 
before, in the growing sense of the unity of its geographi- 
cal lines and the true fellowship of its commodities. The 
people are feeling that in territory we are a nation, and 
rising above sectional narrowness to statesmanlike enlarge- 
ment. 

The diversity of persons, as decided by locality, educa- 
tion, or race, offers a harder problem to the statesman, and 
Europe gives us over to destructoin as being bound to go 
to pieces through so many distracting and heterogeneous 
elements. Our people do not seem to have any such fear, 



174 AMERICAN LIFE. 

but have solved practically the problem of national one- 
ness with such personal varieties. We have taken in for- 
eigners enough perhaps to make two nations as large as our 
whole population at the Declaration of Independence ; and 
while we can not say that the foreign element has been all that 
could be wished, it surely has not been our foremost dan- 
ger ; and the two leading emigrant races, the Irish and the 
German, have done much good by their agricultural and 
mechanical labor, while they have marvelously counterbal- 
anced each other by the reaction of Irish clannishness and 
ecclesiasticism against individualism and free companion- 
ship. A portion of the Irish, indeed, have seemed to have 
a mortal and dangerous antipathy to the negro ; but this 
trouble has come to a head and has been settled by the riots 
of 1863 and their summary end. The negro is not to be 
hunted down and murdered in our streets. Of this our 
soldiers are quite sure, and we believe that the class that 
furnished the rioters are also sure. Our people are firm in 
the faith that mobs are to be put down, and that bayonets 
and grape-shot are shorter and more merciful medicine 
than soft speeches or Quaker guns. 

The hostility between North and South is the greatest 
of our dangers of a personal nature, because so many cir- 
cumstances of climate, trade, and history combine with 
personal dispositions to set the two at variance. But our 
people have never believed in any inevitable, irrepressible 
antagonism between Northerners and Southerners. In old 
times the two sections mingled freely together, aud the 
great men of both sections had a peculiar liking for each 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 175 

other, as the nature of things prepares us to believe. Since 
affinities thrive in the midst of contrasts, the reserved, 
laborious Northerner took comfort in the genial, indolent 
Southerner, in the ancient days of national loyalty. The 
one has always, perhaps, tended more to pride and the love 
of power, the other more to culture and prosperity ; but the 
two got on^ very well together so long as their interests led 
the same way, and the planter's power was helped forward 
by the manufacturer's enterprise and thrift. The same 
congeniality will return when the cause of discord is re- 
moved. Already one obstacle is out of the way, and that 
is the mutual contempt that had begun to exist on account 
of the supposed shiftlessness of the South and the supposed 
cowardice of the North. The two parties have learned a 
certain respect for each other in the stern ordeal of war, 
and both have been too effective and too brave to foster 
any more contempt upon that score. Our soldiers bring 
back no fierce hatred for their antagonists, in spite of their 
too frequent cruelties; and our officers have apparently 
little fear of the rise of amicable fellowship as soon as the 
Secession leaders are out of the way, and the people return 
to their elective affinities. 

But the negro — what shall we do with him, and how 
can the nation be one again, with such a barrier as those 
millions of blacks between the two sections, with the appa- 
rent antagonism of emancipation on one side and perpetual 
slavery on the other ? Precisely what is to be done with 
the negro we do not profess to say, clear as the principle is 
that he is a human creature, and ought at once to have the 



176 AMERICAN LIFE. 

rights of person, property and family that civilzation, even 
in despotic countries, secures to the humblest peasantry. 
Emancipation has been the inevitable issue of the causes 
now at work in both sections. Jefferson Davis himself has 
affirmed the negro's manhood and his love of freedom ; and 
the rebel President, by his assault on Sumter and by his 
last proclamation, became practically the prince of aboli- 
tionists, and struck a blow at the Southern institution that 
Abraham Lincoln could never strike. Our jDeople have 
always believed that emancipation would come at last, but 
they never looked for it or wished it in this way. The enemy 
hath done this, and compelled the nation thus to free the 
negro to save the white man. So let it be, and let slavery 
fall under the stroke of its own friends. Its fall must bring 
North and South together by mutual need ; for the millions 
of blacks must be the curse of the whole people unless they 
are made the blessing of the whole. 

Our people have already settled the statesmanship of 
emancipation, and are in the main as free from negromania 
as from negrophobia. They are understanding the negro's 
defects and excellencies very well, and seeing his fitness 
for the careful training that he needs and accepts. They 
are seeing that the way to get rid of him is to accustom 
him to help himself. Our peojrie have never had that dis- 
ease of negro on the brain that has so afflicted the slavery 
propaganda and their Northern allies, for they have been 
disposed to let him alone, and have not been eager either to 
tread him down or to glorify him. The war has given him 
new consequence, by showing — what our fathers well 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 177 

knew — that he can be a good patriot and a good sol- 
dier. Our people are for giving him a fair chance to find 
his own level. We are in no danger of having him on the 
brain so long as we giye him fair play ; and injustice is 
always sure to haunt its authors with the ghost of its victims. 
Do a man a wrong, pick his pocket, fire his house, forge 
his name, or poison his coffee, or even cherish any grudge 
against him, and we are quite sure to have him on our 
brain day and night. The only sure way to lay the ghost 
is to cease the wrong and set it right. 

There were undoubtedly immense difficulties in the way 
of successful emancipation, but they are greatly lessened 
by recent experiences. It is clear that the negro is more 
docile than was anticipated, far less fierce and dangerous ; 
and if le,ss proud and intellectual than the average white 
man, much more mild, amiable, and reverential. It is clear, 
too, that the Southern horror of destroying the white man's 
social position by putting the negro on the same level of 
civil right is wholly idle. Liberty gives every class its 
proper level ; and whatever the negro is or can be, he will 
be when emancipated. He will be himself, and not the white 
man. The war did much to set this matter right, and no 
observing man can suppose for a moment that freedom de- 
stroys all elective affinities, and confounds all minds and 
tastes in one indiscriminate mass. In our army, where all are 
under the same flag, our men kept their social affinities ; and 
character and culture, whether in officer or private, are sure 
to tell. Our negro soldiers had a character and worth of their 
own ; but they are themselves, and not white men, and they 

H2 



178 AMERICAN LIFE. 

are content to be themselves, with their own associations 
and aptitudes. It is so here at home, where labor follows 
its own law, and party passions are silent. No man thinks 
his social position injured by the fact that our laws protect 
our colored people as well as himself. Nor do our colored 
servants claim undue rank because of their freedom. In 
the country black and white laborers freely meet together 
under the proprietor's eye, and no white man thinks him- 
self at all in danger of degradation by the company. A 
few weeks ago, after finishing a rustic tower upon a high 
rock, to serve as a kind of Temple of Loyalty, tftat should 
lift up the banner and cross aloft in honor, I had need of a 
team of oxen to drag great stones to complete a rough wall 
along the base of the structure, and no team could be pro- 
cured as readily as one belonging to a colored man, a small 
farmer in the neighborhood. He came with his two oxen, 
and worked all day with our own excellent man-of-all-work, 
an excellent specimen of Erin, as trusty as capable. The 
work was admirably done, and in a way to shame the law 
that denied him the right of suffrage. The oxen were 
driven skillfully and gently, the rocks were adroitly han- 
dled, the chat between the two men was playful and friend- 
ly ; and when, at the close of the day, the dark man came 
cheerfully and resolutely with a huge block of white quartz 
upon his drag, and deposited it snugly in its place, near the 
foot of our Union tower, it seemed to me that there might 
be an omen in the event, and that, under God's providence, 
it might be the mission of the dark race to finish the temple 
of our American Liberty and Union by removing the old 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 179 

stigma on our shield, and bringing North and South into 
new and lasting fellowship. Our people are willing to be- 
lieve in some such issue, and the robust, healthy instinct 
of the nation has never been afraid that freedom could de- 
stroy any inherent faculty or taste, or set any race above or 
below its natural and proper level. 

The gravest danger to our national life threatens us from 
the quarter of party-spirit. Parties, more than differences 
of places or persons, have been and are our sorest evil ; yet, 
in some respects, the evil has been less than was feared. 
Socialism has not troubled us, as was predicted ; and it is 
• marvelous that there is so little antagonism between rich 
and poor in our current j)olitics ; and the inanities of Com- 
munism have no hold of our people. The chief cause, prob- 
ably, of the quiet feeling between the rich and poor is the 
fact that there are no fixed classes of rich and poor, but 
there is such free passage from one to the other, that he 
who makes war on either class may be fighting against his 
own children, and even against his own future condition. 
It is a striking fact, moreover, of our social condition, that 
the very order of persons who have been thought, from 
their lineage and condition, most dangerous to our civil 
order, are very fast becoming land-owners, and showing 
something of the conservatism that goes with property. As 
far as our observation goes, it appears clear that our labor- 
ing class in the country are bent on owning land ; and with- 
in a few years we have seen many an acre of ground, with 
cottages, barn, pig, and cow, purchased by men who, in the 
old country, would never have aspired beyond a piece of 



180 AMERICAN LIFE. 

hired land and a miserable shanty. No socialistic terrorism 
threatens us yet, nor has religious rancor risen to such pro- 
portions as to endanger our liberties. Our people have an 
instinctive sense that religious as well as civil liberty is safe, 
and the moment they see any disposition to interfere with 
it they will let the intruders know that freedom has 
weapons of its own, and knows how to strike as well as 
how to let alone. 

Political parties have come near destroying us ; and the 
present rebellion is the work of a political faction that has 
for thirty years been preparing for its accursed work. Yet 
no fair-minded, philosophical man will accuse either of the 
great historical parties of the country of originating seces- 
sion. Andrew Jackson was as good a Union man as Henry 
Clay, and General M'Clellan affirmed the nation's right to 
defend its unity as emphatically as Abraham Lincoln. The 
two great historical parties have started from different poles 
of the same nationality — the first affirming the one organ- 
ism, and the second affirming the many members in our na- 
tional being, yet neither of them of necessity bound to deny 
the other's position ; for if we believe that there are many in 
one, We must believe that there is one in many. Secession 
sprung indeed from one branch of the party of the many ; 
but it is not a legitimate growth of that party, for it repu- 
diates an essential of the Democratic idea, and insults and 
degrades the many States and people by assailing the unity 
that gives to the many liberty, dignity, and peace. Our 
people have seen from the beginning that secession is na- 
tional suicide, and must be put down. Hence the persis- 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 181 

tency of the war spirit for four years, and the marvelous 
indorsement of that spirit at the late election. Neither 
party at the polls avowed secession, nor intended to favor 
it ; but the political tricksters who drew up one of the plat- 
forms basely shrank from declaring openly the power of the 
nation to defend its life by arms, and foully insulted our 
slain and wounded heroes by declaring their sacrifice a fail- 
ure and a folly. Our people would not stand such disloy- 
alty and nonsense. They smelt the rat with their nostrils 
before they had time to speculate deeply upon the philoso- 
phy of the offense, and they would have nothing to do with 
any candidates who were mixed up with its abettors. Our 
people re-elected our President for many reasons indeed, 
but mainly from the best of all reasons, because they be- 
lieved that he represented the vital, historical, Providential 
life of the nation ; and that, with all his defects, he was a 
sound, old-fashioned American, and meant to live, and 
have us all live, under the old flag in spite of all rebel- 
dom, even with England and France as its backers. The 
people were right, we believe ; and it was the best states- 
manship to re-elect Abraham Lincoln. 

He took his honors modestly enough, and understood 
his position and what was expected of him. He intended 
to prove that his Unionism means not the ruin but the sal- 
vation of the States, and it will ere long show that in the 
Union, not out of it, even the now rebel States will find a 
prosperity, peace, and security that they could never win 
by being torn away from their historical and normal re- 
lation. He proved that the many were meant to be one, 



182 AMERICAN LIFE. 

and time will prove that the one will protect and encour- 
age the many, so as to secure to our great future a variety 
in unity such as we have never before known in the palm- 
iest days of the republic. Our true policy will bring out all 
positive elements of local character as well as wealth, and 
in due time it will appear that the very traits that have 
done us wrong and moved our indignation can do us good 
and win our admiration. When Southern valor again be- 
comes loyal we too shall be proud of it, and the Stonewall 
Jacksons of the future shall rank as do the Andrew Jack- 
sons of the past. Even Southern Rights may cease to be 
an ' offensive word, and may enlist our enthusiasm and 
strength, when sought for and enjoyed in the Union, 
against all oppression and all misrule. 

So we believe that our people hold fast to our great 
National Idea of the Many in One in face of all the differ- 
ences of places, persons, and parties that seem to threaten 
it. Their religious sentiment is evidently accepting and 
exalting this national principle as never before, and sing- 
ing and praying and preaching patriotism as of the essence 
of true faith. Our reading of history, our trust in Provi- 
dence, our discipline of labor and sorrow, our sense of our 
mission in God's kingdom — nay, even our study of the 
variety and unity of nature around us, the law of differen- 
tialism and integration, the plainest teachings of God's 
bounty to us, and through us to the world, all combine to 
lift loyal conviction into an inspiration, and to make us 
hear the eternal Word confirming our great habit and 
popular instinct of nation ality, and assuring us that God 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 183 

hath made us, and not we ourselves, and we have no right 
to abdicate the dignity to which we are called. 

Our manifest destiny is substantiating our national idea 
by exhibiting its practical development in the great spheres 
of industry, government, morality, and religion. We are 
not speaking now of any ambitious theories or adventurer's 
visions, but of the obvious drift of affairs, and of the dis- 
positions and work of our people. 

We are a working people, and never since time was has 
there been a nation in which so many persons have taken 
a direct interest in the welfare of the country, and iden- 
tified its welfare with their own. We all believe in getting 
a fair living ; and our industry and enterprise have told 
wonderfully not only upon our national prosperity but our 
national spirit. An idea is nothing or next to nothing with- 
out some corresponding spirit ; and what Plato calls spirit, 
or the irascible quality, is a necessary trait of the rational 
man if he would be practical or do any thing in the world. 
Now surely our labor has been a great school of public 
spirit or of national will ; and while we have been sever- 
ally thinking of getting a living, and opening springs of 
industry to please ourselves, Providence, by its own j)re- 
vailing laws, has been connecting these together, as it 
connects the rills of the mountains with the brooks of the 
meadow and the waters of the sea, until what seemed 
dribbling weakness and feeble loneliness swells into com- 
bined majesty, and the grandeur of the all flows out from 
the little offerings of each. How magnificent is the wealth 
of the country, and what patience and strength and per- 



184 AMERICAN LIFE. 

sistency have entered into the spirit of the people under 
this long discipline of toil ! Power, like substance, is not 
lost, but only transformed ; and what a startling manifes- 
tation of national power has sprung from the rising of 
industrial energy into public spirit ! 

The wealth of the country feels the pulsation of its 
great heart, and a unity of life is seeking to assimilate its 
commodities together in a true economy and fellowship. 
What wonders from the mine, as iron, copper, lead, coal, 
silver and gold, come up from the dark earth ; and not de- 
mons of darkness, but spirits of light, they join hands in 
benign activity, and distance the legends of magicians by 
the miracles of their harmonized utilities. Our fields and 
orchards join them in their ministry, and enrich and unite 
the nation with their gifts. Our grain, wheat, corn, rye, are 
all loyal servitors, and bind us to the sugar and rice and 
cotton of the South by a thousand affinities. Our products 
make us one nation as well as our lakes and mountains and 
rivers and seas, and our political economy is an important 
part of our manifest destiny. Our people are seeing this ; 
and not only do industrial statistics now enter into com- 
mon education, but our mechanics' and farmers' fairs and 
festivals are teaching the magnificence of our resources 
and the Providential unity of our domain. Even the 
burden of taxation has pressed upon us the conviction of 
our national ability as well as need; and the purse is re- 
garded as the loyal defender of the flag. Our laboring 
class are feeling a new sense of proprietorship in the soil 
and its products; and the mines of Pennsylvania and of the 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 185 

Pacific coast not only swell our statistics of revenue but 
animate the courage and loyalty of the people, as if each 
man had interest and honor in the affluence of all. So let 
it be, until we work out our destiny to the full, and He to 
whom the earth with its fullness belongs enables us to see 
that His will is done in our fullness, and prosperity is the 
handmaid of humanity and religion. 

We take as cheerful a view of the development of our 
national idea in the sphere of government. We have been 
learning to govern and to be governed for more than two 
hundred years, and our native American people especially 
have the hereditary spirit that reconciles liberty with law, 
and so unites two master forces, obedience and authority, 
in our loyal temper. The spirit of good government was 
nurtured in the old colonial townships, and went up through 
successive steps to the chair of the state and the nation. 
Never, probably, in history has there been so much school- 
ing in the function of government as here within a century, 
and a mighty habit of order has been formed that has 
taken possession even of the rude border regions, and won 
the wild passions of the rough populace to the restraints of 
law and the blessings of civilization. California, when cut 
off from the direct control of the national arm, became a 
law to herself; and her own people, not a mob but a Vig- 
ilance Committee, like Saul of Tarsus, were won by an 
inward manifestation of the rightful rule to true loyalty 
and they carried to the sister States, as Paul carried to the 
Apostles' college, the commission of membership, which 
came not so much of flesh and blood as from above. Our 



186 AMERICAN LIFE. 

national order has been a constant schooling of public 
spirit, and our statesmen have been the generals of our 
peace, as our generals have been the statesmen of our 
war. 

Undoubtedly the chief source of our satisfaction in our 
strong men is in their power to bring out the purpose that 
we all cherish or do what we all wish to do. A great 
thinker or speaker charms us by bringing out our own 
latent thought, and the word comes home to us, we say, 
because it touches a chord all ready to be touched. So a 
hero, whether in the Senate or the field, comes home to us 
by bringing out our own latent will, and doing for us what 
we can not do of ourselves. Our leaders in peace and war 
lead our spirit as well as our idea, and while we are proud 
of them, we thank them most for their mastery of heroic 
force, their power to win us by their very command. So 
now we delight in our great generals, as they cheer, and 
strengthen, and integrate our own wavering spirits, and the 
national pluck is embodied and organized in their will. 
We are no more afraid of being trodden on by them than 
we are afraid of being o]i>pressed by a great thinker ; for 
the hero ceases to be himself the moment he ceases to be 
possessed by the public will, just as the thinker ceases to 
be himsell^and loses his charm the moment he sacrifices 
truth to passion or policy, and private feeling displaces 
intellectual loyalty.* We rejoice greatly, therefore, in our 
noble generals and their brave armies. They develop 
powers that are to live in the life of the nation ; and our 
people feel the truth even better than they know how to 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 187 

express it, and believe that peace will make us braver, as 
well as more loyal than ever, from the permanence of the 
spirit of discipline that goes from the camp and field to the 
household and school and Senate. There are, of course, 
bad soldiers ; and war of itself is a sad evil, yet its temper 
is not selfish, but social and patriotic ; and they who fight 
bravely under the flag affirm the law of the land in every 
blow, and declare the first essential of peace by the sword. 
War is the necessary act of government when assailed, and 
is as justifiable in certain circumstances as the police of our 
cities, which defends our persons and property by making 
constant war upon crime. We accept the military disci- 
pline of the last few years as part of the manifest destiny 
of the Nation, and are convinced by it that we have a 
heroic will as well as a leading idea. We have been 
laughed at as a set of braggarts half drunk with reveling 
in the wealth of a land that came to us by chance. We 
shall be laughed at no longer after such valor by sea and 
land. We do not laugh at our antagonists, for they too 
are brave, and are our own countrymen, and are to be 
again under our flag. We had rather fight with them than 
against them, and again, as of old, count their blood as 
part and parcel of our own. 

We have no time to treat of our national destiny in its 
highest sjmere, the region of morals and religion ; and we 
must be content with the merest glance. It is becoming 
every year more evident, that while with us Church and 
State have been, are likely to be, distinct in organization 
and function, they are to have great influence upon each 



188 AMERICAN LIFE. 

other, and that religion is feeling as well as shaping the 
character of our people and institutions. Recent struggles 
have brought out the temper of our great churches, and 
done much to bring them together in a certain fellowship of 
thought and feeling, if not of name. Take, for example, 
the most widely contrasted branches — the branches of ex- 
treme centralization and extreme individualism — the Ro- 
man Catholic and the Puritan Independent, the former 
with its historical priesthood and polity, its national council 
and far-seeing conservatism and its fixed authority ; the lat- 
ter with its popular will, congregational freedom, subjective 
mind, aud radical temper. How strongly the Puritan In- 
dependent has argued and worked and fought for the 
national life, and given largeness to his method by loyal 
fidelity. How much he has done to connect the stubborn 
individualism of which he has been the sturdy champion, 
with the national fellowship without which individualism 
runs mad with self-conceit and self-will. The Roman Cath- 
olic, with the other prelatical bodies, has helped us perhaps 
more than he has known by keeping in view the historic 
unity and progress of true civilisation, and never consenting 
to surrender the integrity of his church organization to 
party passions or sectional strife. The Roman Catholic 
Church, as is the case with all prelacy, has been too timid 
in some respects, and not all of her prelates have, like Purcell 
and Timon, spoken out fully the word of humanity and 
patriotism that the nation craves, and Christendom should 
give now as of old. Yet Catholicism has done us good by 
keeping open great lines of fellowship between the beliger- 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 189 

ents as well as presenting us with noble specimens of gen- 
eralship. She will do us more good when we, as a nation, 
study better the secret of her organic power, and master 
the arts of administration which her leaders have so well 
understood not always in the interests of liberty and pro- 
gress. Between the two, the Independent and the Catholic, 
dwell a great company of thoughtful and well-balanced 
Christians, who can help the nation vastly in the present 
need by uniting depth of personal conviction with breadth 
of vision and force of will, in such a way as to bring out the 
resources of American character and fulfil our destiny in 
the kingdom of God on earth. Not in form, but in fact, the 
American Church is uniting the radical idea of the many 
with the conservative idea of the one. 

We are near some crisis that is to call out the higher 
principles and powers of our people as never before. We 
have been at war with States who speak our language, pro- 
fess our religion, and share our history and laws with us. 
We must not only subdue their rebellion but reclaim them 
to loyalty. The religion of the country must affirm the 
sanctity of the national idea, and exalt the public will by 
homage to the Supreme will, so as make even the enemy 
respect the motive, and discriminate between brute force or 
sectional pride, and civic virtue or moral heroism. The re- 
ligion of the country must help on the coming reconciliation 
by a spirit as gentle as it is brave, as merciful as it is just 
and true. A great work is to be done in this way, and it 
is too much to expect of our rulers to do the whole of it, or 
look even to Presidential Messages, or Cabinet Reports, to 



190 AMERICAN LIFE. 

say all that the best heart and culture of the people craves. 
Precisely what is to be said or done by Christian influence 
we will not undertake to say ; but sure we are that the time 
is near for a Christian mediation that must leave its mark 
upon the national life, and show that not only in the age of 
miracles did living waters flow from the flinty rock. 

The American's character itself is to he invigorated, soft- 
ened, and enlarged, and lifted up, by the discipline of war 
and pacification. He is to have a certain individualism, 
but not like the German, who hates organization ; he is to 
hold fast to institutions, but not like the Englishman, who 
dreads change ; he is to love universal ideas, but not like 
the Frenchman, who makes ambitious abstractions bow the 
knee to imperial pride. Independent, steadfast, cosmopoli- 
tan, the American will keep the post to which Providence 
has called him, and his manifest destiny shall bring ruin 
upon no other race or nation, but serve the welfare of man- 
kind and the glory of God. 

Thus, near the 4th of March, 1865, we interpreted the 
cheerful lessons in Statesmanship that were taught us by the 
8th of November, 1864. 

Merciful Heaven, how overwhelming the events, disas- 
ters, successes, fears, hopes, strife of arms and words, peace 
of treaties and of tempers since that time. Thank the God 
of our fathers, that Abraham Lincoln's " plain people " still 
remember his teaching and their Presidential training. 
They have the country in their hands and mean to keep it 
for their children in the face of all destroyers, whether 
dainty gentlemen, raving agitators or dirty ruffians. 



LEARNING STATESMANSHIP. 191 

A Happy Christmas or New Year to our fellow States- 
men, the people of our America. They are our great success 
and hope. 



IX. 

Off- Hand Speaking. 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 195 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 

A TALK WITH TWO COLLEGIANS. 

# 

T/ r OU are soon, my dear fellows, to leave college, and 
enter upon a more direct course of training for the 
work of your life in the great world. You R., are to take 
after your good father and go into the ministry ; and you, 
are also to follow the family bent, and be a merchant, as is 
your father, as well as your grandfather, whose well-known 
name you bear. We are to have a little talk together 
now, as of old, upon your career, and the proper pre- 
paration for it. Some matters might, perhaps, be now 
profitably discussed that have come up between us before ; 
but itis-best at present to take a new subject, and one that 
is not only interesting and important to you, but to hun- 
dreds of our young men of your years and prospects. I mean 
off-hand speech, or what is usually called extempore speak- 
ing. 

The fact that you have been through college by no 
means implies that you have learned this art ; for many 
very good scholars, according to the college scale, are un •• 



196 AMERICAN LIFE. 

able to say a word for themselves without the book or manu- 
script; and I have known admirable linguists, mathema- 
ticians, and essayists who blush up to the eyes and 
stammer and flounder the moment they are asked to speak 
without written preparation even upon a familiar subject. 
Perhaps it is generally the case that bookish • men are more 
troubled to find words in time of need than practical men 
who have been trained in the world to speak as the occasion 
calls. The cause is obvious, and one that by no means 
disparages book-leaming, but urges constant training in ap- 
plying book-knowledge to things as they are. The scholar 
knows more of words than things, and he is in the 
habit of depending upon the written word to suggest 
to him the thing, so as to be sometimes sadly puzzled to 
name or describe the thing in the absence of the written 
word. His own language is to him very much like a for- 
eign tongue that he has learned to read but not to speak, 
and in which he can easily read the masters of its literature, 
without being able to muster words enough to tell his most 
common wants in conversation. The man of affairs is not 
troubled in this way; and however deficient he may 
be in a classic vocabulary, he has at his tongue's end all he 
knows, and his words rise to his lips the moment he sees 
the things which they designate. The farmer can talk 
farm, and the sailor ship, and the merchant shop very glibly, 
and they are never troubled to find the connecting link 
between the thing and the name. Sometimes unschooled 
men have a rich and ready vocabulary by large observation 
and experience that gives them a unique eloquence ; and 



OFF-HAND SPEAKINtl. 197 

scholars may almost envy untaught orators and poets the 
homely, and vigorous, and pictorial speech which comes to 
them from learning of nature and life at first hand without 
the mediation of books. There is something in such spirits 
as Bunyan and Burns that books can not give. That dreamer 
evidently had studied the Slough of Despond and the Delec- 
table Mountains from sloughs and mountains before his own 
eyes ; and this poet had seen the Daisy and Mouse for him- 
self before he put pen to paper. The same principle holds 
good of ready and eloquent speech ; and the preachers and 
orators who have learned words from things do better, 
other matters being equal, than those who learn things 
from words. We are all coming now to a perception of 
this truth, and applying it to education from the nursery 
upward. Say apple to a child, and he will say it after you, 
after a fashion ; but show him a ripe, red apple, and let him 
taste of it, and he will tell its name with gusto, so as to 
carry the color and the flavor in his tones. 

Undoubtedly a great cause of the relative inefficiency of 
many highly-educated men as popular speakers comes from 
their dealing with nature and life at second hand, or 
through words, instead of taking them at first hand from 
the very things. Of course this is not the necessary result 
of education, as such, but only of what usually passes for 
education. A well educated man will not be content with 
being a mere wood-monger, but he will insist upon having 
every word answer to a thing; and he, moreover, will not 
think himself master of the word until he can go to it from 
the thing, as well as from it to the thing. In order to be 



198 AMERICAN LIFE. 

rid of the verbiage that is so apt to trouble students they will 
do well to bear in mind two rules. In the first place, let 
them live as far as possible in contact with reality ; see 
and hear nature and the world with their own eyes and 
ears, and verify the words in the book by the word that is 
in human life. Some scholars are so shadowy and ghostly 
as hardly to verify by their own observation and experience 
the most commonplace terms — being hardly able to say 
for themselves what flesh and blood, bone and sinew, horse 
and boat, woods and river mean. The moment these words 
are mated with reality they have a wholly new expression, 
as if the soul had found its body, and sent its life through 
the whole frame. It is encouraging to note how fondly and 
readily such words then come to mind, and how well even 
a child will talk of objects that have come before the 
senses, or stirred the will and the affections. There is far 
too large a portion of the vocabulary of students that is 
without this living commentary, not only from the seclu- 
sion that shuts out too much of the material world, but 
from the indifference that ignores the great principles and 
duties of society. The words of home, and country, and 
religion are not alive upon the lips until the things them- 
selves are alive in the soul, and personal loyalty, domestic, 
national, and spiritual, makes them burn with meaning and 
love. It is well, therefore, for a young man to shun the 
perils of the mere book-worm, and to make a genial and 
worthy life run parallel with his studies, so that he shall 
not be a stranger to any of the verities and virtues that 
make up so much of the soul of the great body of litera- 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 199 

ture. Some religious writer has spoken of the importance 
of the orator having an eloquent experience, meaning, un- 
doubtedly, that he who feels much will speak strongly on 
spiritual matters — for out of the abundance of the heart 
the mouth speaketh. But why limit the remark to one 
class of subjects? Why ought not all experience to 
be eloquent ? Why must not all Avords shine and burn 
that speak our living thought or repeat our personal experi- 
ence ? Cicero well and wisely said that the good orator 
must be a good man. This holds true for many reasons, 
and, among others, for this reason — because a good man 
has all human affections within him, and the language of 
human life is to him a living language, a vernacular tongue, 
and every noble sentence has an interpreter within his own 
soul. The diction and the elocution will both profit by a 
true experience ; and the true man's word will not only be 
the right one, but the strong one. 

It is a somewhat curious study to look over the few 
thousand words that make the staple of human expression, 
and see how much experience they imply — how much 
knowledge of truth and falsehood, good and evil. The 
English language is said to contain about a hundred thou- 
sand available words ; but, of course, many of these are too 
technical or strange to be used in common speech, and a 
well-educated man employs but a few thousand words in 
writing and speaking upon ordinary subjects. Shakspeare 
used but fifteen thousand, and Milton has in his poems not 
more than eight thousand. Estimate our vocabulary mod- 
estly, and say that in our speech and conversation we 



200 AMERICAN LIFE. 

employ or ought to employ some five thousand words, and 
try as nearly as we can to make out a list of them. How 
instructive and startling is that simple catalogue ! and one 
might think even the dictionary interesting reading, if we 
could allow its simplest terms to question us closely, and 
make us tell how faithfully our own life has been interpret- 
ing their meaning by studying whatever is good and true 
and shunning all that is evil and false. We might find that 
our vocabulary is in some respects incomplete, because our 
experience has been so beggarly, and while there are some 
words to be learned, there are others to be unlearned. Most 
of us, veterans of the pen and the voice, undoubtedly have 
great defects in our vocabulary, and some of us use a few 
pet words everlastingly, while we are strangers to some 01 
the noblest terms in the language. Young men like you 
have their vocabulary to form, and your present habits will 
have much to do with the phraseology that you domesticate 
upon your lips. In your college course, in reading, trans- 
lating, and writing, you must have employed a pretty large 
portion of the language ; but the words that you have used 
once or twice are not a part of your vocabulary, and may 
never recur to you again. That is vocabulary to us which 
comes home to us, and is familiar and easy ; in fact, our 
mother-tongue. It is important to make this as large and 
effective as the demands of truth and duty. The present is 
eminently a formative period with you, and you are to de- 
cide what words to drop and what to adopt. Educated, as 
you have been, under judicious masters, you will not need 
to have me argue with you upon the importance of prefer- 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 201 

ring the simplest, strongest terms to such as are fanciful 
and euphuistic, and of wedding to your lips as much as 
possible of the homely, hearty old Saxon. It has strength 
and beauty too, like the rock that can be built into solid 
walls or polished into shining gems. Homeliness you 
know how to distinguish from vulgarity ; and let me urge 
you to throw out of your common conversation the vulgar- 
isms and whatever passes as slang in college or in the 
world. These will taint even your public speech, if not by 
stealing covertly into your sentences, at least by making 
you constrained, and robbing your delivery of that easy 
colloquial flow, that is so great a charm in off-hand utter- 
ance, and which is easily acquired if you can put yourself 
upon your habitudes, and let the thought move in its wonted 
way without fear of its playing off any uncouth antics or mor- 
tifying laxities. Let the memory be full of the choicest 
words from the ample treasures of your study and your 
observation, and you will find your mouth richer far than 
you knew, as day by day you bring them into use, or as 
they start unbidden at the touch of nature or the stir 
of life. 

I spoke of two rules for guarding against the pedantic 
verbiage that crams the student with mere words ; and 
have illustrated the first of these in what I have said of 
the importance of making nature and life the interpreter of 
language, so as to have words stand for things. The sec- 
ond rule relates to such mastery of kmguage as enables us 
to lay hold of it when we want it most, or learning to go 
from the thing to the word, instead of expecting always 

12 



202 AMERICAN LIFE. 

to have the book before us to lead to the thing. To com- 
mand language is not merely to have it, but to have it 
within call, and he surely is not master of this learning 
who can not use it at will. No kind of property is more 
deceptive than that which is literary, for there is none that 
so tempts the owner to call his own what he can do noth- 
ing with. Money and lands, if we have not mind or force 
to use them, can be loaned or given to others ; but our 
literary stock becomes dead rubbish if it is not quick with 
living thought and an earnest purpose. Our college edu- 
cation is often sadly deficient in the practical training that 
enables the student to bring his resources to bear upon real 
life, and the mind as well as the body suffers much from 
the neglect of the muscular force and suppleness that give 
calmness and strength to the overwrought nerves, and help 
them translate their sensations into deeds. The great point, 
then, is^to utilize what we know by a practical spirit and 
method, or by a thorough discipline. As to the best dis- 
cipline for the powers of sjaeech there are a great many 
prescriptions, and we are quite willing to have them all 
tried, and that especial way preferred which best meets 
each case. The books on the subject are without end as to 
number, and the chief of them may be read by you with 
profit, and read again if you have ever studied them at all. 
Cicero de Oroatore is a masterly treatise, and Quintilian has 
admirable thoughts. But the best book on the topic for 
our day is that of Bautain, a French abbe : this is written 
mainly for preachers, but does well for all public speakers. 
Books, however, amount to little unless you practice upon 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 203 

them for yourselves, and this word practice is the root of 
the whole matter. If we would learn to speak, we must 
begin to speak ; and to stop short of this, in order to pre- 
pare, is to refuse to go into the water because we have 
not learned to swim. 

I advise you to take every proper opportunity to speak 
for yourselves. It is not well, indeed, to speak for the sake 
of speaking, but whenever you have any thing to say. It is 
not proper to mistake gabble for speech, and fall into the 
monstrous habit of talking against time, without regard to 
sense or spirit. I think it was Lord Brougham who advised 
a young aspirant to oratorical fame to begin by acquiring 
volume or spouting words, at any rate or any how, and 
afterward minding exactness of thought and expression; 
just as a miller must have a mill-stream to begin with, and 
as soon as the water runs freely he can look carefully to the 
waterwheels, and millstones, and all the apparatus for using 
the water. It certainly is dangerous, and may be fatal to a 
man to begin to speak loosely and insincerely merely for 
the sake of hearing himself talk ; and nothing makes a man 
more sure of being voted an intolerable bore than the name 
of being such an interminable talker — one of those ever- 
lasting prosers who keep running on like a neglected hy- 
drant, simply for want of power to keep the mouth shut. 
In our day we had one such speaker, who never pretended 
to believe what he said, or to ask others to believe in him, 
but made a joke of talking against time. He could discharge 
an enormous volume of words within a given limit, after the 
most florid pattern, without ever being conscious of a con- 



204 AMERICAN LIFE. 

viction or an idea, or giving such consciousness to others. 
He meant to talk and be talked of; and, sure enough, he 
did spout himself into a conspicuous office somewhere down 
in Dixie, but he dearly won his honors by sacrifice of much 
that was noble in his birth-right. When, after years of 
absence, he returned to the old college halls, he did not 
even seek out his own class, but sat at another table, and 
when cordially greeted by his familiar name, he stared at 
his old cronies and pretended not to know them. He 
probably at this moment is playing oif the same game toward 
the land of his birth, and joining his rebel boon companions 
in curses at New England with her schools and churches. 
His case so well illustrates the consequences, and perhaps 
also the cause, of heartless speaking, that I can not but 
allude to it here as a warning. Let him repent and he will 
be forgiven, and we will remember and encourage his good 
points ; but at present he seems to me to have done the 
meanest thing that ever was perpetrated by a decent grad- 
uate from our college halls. 

Do begin with speaking honestly and faithfully your own 
sincere thoughts in the best possible way, and taking every 
just occasion to express yourself well. Common conversa- 
tion is good, alike for the voice and the vocabulary, and 
nothing is better discipline than the unaffected, sympathetic 
tone, and the easy colloquial language that good-fellowship 
gives. I need not warn you of the danger of mistaking dis- 
course for conversation, and haranguing your companions 
in lengthened words and sonorous periods instead of pleas- 
antly chatting with them. A thing is good when it is 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 205 

good of its kind ; and discourse, which pretends to be talk, is 
not good after its kind, and is in danger of encouraging the 
very affectation and deceit that we have been condemning. 
Often, indeed, talk readily and properly rises into discus- 
sion, and while you are at table, or in your walks, you find 
yourself speaking at length before you know it, and some 
of the best lessons in expression come to you unbidden at 
such times. Your latest studies and reading come fitly and 
happily into such discussions; and I remember nothing 
more fondly in our training for professional life than those 
free-and-easy chats that expanded so naturally into grave 
colloquies. Our Commons fare was much sweeter from this 
seasoning ; and who of us would not give a great deal for a 
full and fair report of those chance talks over our beef and 
pudding ? The fact that we were not wholly as knowing as 
we now are lent fresh zest to conversation, for nothing so spi- 
ces expression as the talker's honest faith in what he is say- 
ing ; and while we were making our first acquaintance with 
the master poets and thinkers we could venture, with earnest 
and amiable simplicity, upon a great many loving and believ- 
ing assertions that would stagger our now harder temper and 
credence. We have not forgotten, indeed, Plato and Aris- 
totle, Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Descartes and Male- 
branche ; but I am afraid that we who are now near fifty 
could not discourse so magisterially upon those worthies 
and their works as when, like you, we were just out of our 
teens, and proud of the beards that were hoisting the sign 
of manhood upon our feces, and tempting us to parade it in 
our thinking. 



206 AMERICAN LIFE. 

All young men should be in the habit of speaking delib- 
erately among their associates upon topics of importance, 
and in our day the college clubs were most important 
schools of training. I am afraid that they have in some 
respects degenerated now, and that far more importance 
is given to the elegance of their equipment and the fre- 
quency and costliness of their banquets, than to the good 
sense and earnestness of their debates, and the finish and 
nobleness of their essays and orations. The Law and Di- 
vinity schools continued these discussions, and our candi- 
dates for the bar and pulpit did almost as much for each 
other in friendly debate as their professors did for them in 
grave lectures. In such discipline we learned to think and 
talk upon our legs ; and we have been carried through many 
a hard trial and critical emergency by that pleasant and 
companionable training. Some of us made a point of speak- 
ing somewhere as often as once a week, and we were glad 
to vary the audience and the theme as much as possible. 
We began in the Freshman year — so long, long ago — 
and made our debut with a dozen or two of beardless boys 
like ourselves in the room of one of our class-mates. We 
took no name, but consented to be called, in fun, the " Lit- 
erati in Fumo," because our debates generally ended in 
smoke ; and perhaps the fumes of the cigars were a fair 
symbol of the haziness of our ideas. Year by year the field 
expanded, until we saw our own pet speakers the favorite 
orators of the great University Clubs, and not a few of 
them have won signal honors in the high places of profes- 
sional life. Sometimes we tried our gift in new and strange 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 207 

quarters ; and great was the gusto with which, in our Sen- 
ior year, we frequented the Lyceum of the village where 
we kept school. The subjects there were more popular and 
practical, and the audience was more varied, and in some 
respects more sympathetic. The mothers and maidens 
smiled favor upon the new-fledged orators from the college 
nest ; and lest our laurels might be too easily won, some 
very shrewd and tough reason ers from the bush joined in 
the debate, and made us do our best to keep from being put 
down by their strong sense and pithy speech. Afterward 
we enlarged our sphere still further; and in jails and. pris- 
ons, as well as in church schools and social conferences, we 
tried to stir up the gift that was within us. Great was the 
day when our two schools of Law and Divinity joined to- 
gether in a Moot Court, under Judge Story's presidency, 
and one school furnished counsel and the other the jury. 
One of the most voluble of the orators was a Southern fire- 
eater in a suit of flame-colored home-spun ; and we little 
thought that the nullification that the costume then sym- 
bolized would afterward swell into secession, and that flame 
would light the fires of this fearful rebellion. 

In advising you to use all such occasions for practice in 
off-hand speaking, I know very well that a more stern and 
exact culture is required to save you from winning ease 
and copiousness at the expense of correctness and beauty. 
It is dangerous to speak much without also writing care- 
fully ; for however happy you may be in spontaneous ex- 
pression, you inevitably tend to looseness and diffuseness, 
unless you sharpen and rectify your words by your pen and 



208 AMERICAN LIFE. 

carefully purge and point your style. Close and elegant 
written composition not only tells upon your manuscript 
but upon your conversation and speech, and is as vital to 
oratory as the drill is to war. It will no more rob you of 
fervor than faithful drilling robs the soldier of his fire, and 
the sentences that are best knit together transmit the glow 
of passion as the solid and well-trained phalanx burns with 
martial fire, and launches itself like a lightning flash upon 
the enemy. It is well to unite careful writing with free 
speech, and to go into debate with the mind filled and clari- 
fied by the pen and the tongue at the same time, free to 
move at will. For all important occasions this is the best 
preparation, and he who is habituated to it will find that 
his writing gives him breadth and sequence without shut- 
ting him up in his manuscript, and giving him the con- 
straint of manner and thought that are so apt to damage 
mere memoriter speaking. 

A capital exercise in elegance and exactness of expres- 
sion is to be found in your classic studies. You probably 
went through much of your Latin and Greek as mere task- 
work, without entering with great zest into the merits of 
the thought or expression. Recur now to the great mas- 
ters, and take up your Virgil or Horace, Livy or Tacitus, 
Homer or Sophocles, and render the choice passages into 
your best English. Try this plan with a classic friend if it 
becomes irksome to you by yourself. This exercise does far 
more for you than merely to give you the sense of the original. 
It enables you to select and handle the richest words and 
idioms of your own tongue. It is a lesson in extempore 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 209 

speech by setting you to work to find not only fit terms for 
given idioms, but suitable graces to answer to the graces 
of the original. In one sense it is a better exercise than 
original composition, for it gives you a clue to niceties or 
elegance of expression that you would not be likely to hit 
upon of yourself, and at the same time it relieves you of the 
servility of being a mere copyist. You have a model 
before you then, and this suggests much that is important ; 
but you are not to copy it exactly, much less mechanically, 
and you are to retain and portray its very life in a different 
material or medium. You are not only to use a different 
canvas for your picture, but different pencils and pigments. 
So you learn to be an artist yourself in presence of the 
works of the great masters. 

The forms of speech are so many, and language is so far 
the voice of our almost infinite thought and life, that no 
school-training can exhaust its various movements or give 
you its wonderful art. The sword exercise is the combina- 
nation of a few passes, and dancing is taught in a few steps 
variously combined ; but who shall presume to number the 
passages of the human voice, or name the steps taken in 
speech, whether verse or prose ? The best models are here 
the true masters ; and no man who is not a thorough stu- 
dent of the great authors who have shaped language can 
catch the true movement of words, and understand and 
apply their countless variety. Take for example an oration 
of Cicero, and what a drill it is in variety of terms and 
idioms ! The page swarms with a mighty host in every 
process of evolution. You see a battle-field, the words 



210 AMERICAN LIFE. 

marshalled like troops of every grade and arm, and man- 
oeuvring in every phasis of tactics. You must be there 
yourself if you would know what is going on ; and you can 
not but be there, and under the general's own eye, if you 
follow his order with your own, and render faithfully his 
programme into your own living translation. The study of 
such masters will give us new freedom of movement, and 
if we are careful to catch their inspiration and guard against 
imitative mannerism, we learn to break up the plodding 
monotony of a merely closet style, and infuse the freshness 
of life into our diction and tones. It is well to try the 
influence of all classes of writers in this way, and to go 
from the florid magnificence of Cicero to the sententious 
point of Tacitus ; to hold converse with the dignified and 
sometimes sombre Virgil after the gay and witty Horace ; 
and to muse on Fate with Aeschylus after singing jolly 
songs with Anacreon and triumphal odes with old Pindar. 
We scholastics tend sadly to run into ruts, and the more is 
the pity, since we have at hand such ready methods of 
correction ; and the whole life of literature, ancient and 
modern, is asking to take us by the hand and to lead us its 
own way at the moving of its mighty and various and 
genial will. How can we mope on so in the dumps with 
such stirring spirits within call ? 

It is the peculiar privilege of the scholar not only to 
know languages, but also language ; or to catch the form 
and spirit of that great humanity that has been voicing 
itself in words from the beginning, and which speaks to us 
now in such fullness in the Historic Word that informs all 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 211 

the master tongues whether living or dead. Philosophi- 
cally speaking, there is virtually but one language, which 
is the soul of all dialects ; and what we call the dead lan- 
guages are called so because they are the real roots of 
speech, and, as such, are under ground that they may the 
more effectually sustain and quicken the new tongues that 
have branched from them. A generous classic training 
enables you to see and feel this continuity of life ; and if 
you not only study well the great models of antiquity, but 
also keep yourself alive, genial, and active in present affairs 
and keep your tongue in vital communion with living 
society, you will find that you are entering into the grand 
affiliation, and your diction is blooming out and fruiting 
from the majestic tree of speech planted by the Lord of 
ages. There will be to you an increasing element of gra- 
cious inspiration in speech, and your words will have new 
and cheering relations with the eternal Word. How lan- 
guage begun we do not know, and the same mystery 
attaches to this as to all origin, whether in nature or mind. 
But as we use language freshly and well, and find how full 
of spirit and life it is, we Come to something like a satisfac- 
tory idea of its origin, in our experience of the vital powers 
that preside over speech, and which are as independent of 
our understanding and will as the air and the lungs, that are 
so essential to utterance, exist independently of our doing or 
thinking. Philologians like Muller seem to think that 
speech came at first by a certain inspiration ; and that man, 
who, of course, was created with organs of speech, found 
himself uttering words when he first felt the mystery of 



212 AMERICAN LIFE. 

existence, and the new-found world first touched the springs 
of life, and the spontaneous forces of his being came into play 
with a fullness that no artificial schooling can reproduce, 
How speech was first generated we will not undertake to say. 
but we are content to illustrate its generation by its regenera- 
tion ; and surely every man who is true master of language, 
and who finds his own thoughts and affections in full com- 
munion with the historical word of his race, his own mind 
voicing itself spontaneously in the standard voice of man- 
kind, and the spirit of mankind flowing back into the soul 
from the spoken aud written word — the scholar who has 
any thing of this experience, has a literary regeneration 
that will help him mightily toward his interpretation of 
the genesis of speech. You, my dear fellows, will know 
this experience more and more as you enter earnestly into 
life, and you will find in that great school a light and a fire 
that seldom wait on college themes or exhibition platforms. 
Perhaps you think me thus far dealing too much in gen- 
eralities, and you would like to have me come more to the 
practical point, and tell you what to do when you wish to 
meet an especial occasion, or when you are cornered un- 
expectedly and have to stand up and speak for yourself or 
be ashamed. All that has been said bears upon tb is point, 
for whatever makes a man master of language makes him 
master of the occasion that calls him out. A good speaker, 
like a good soldier, is always ready — his powers never 
broken by servile dulness, nor unstrung by indolence ; his 
armor always bright, and his weapons at hand. I allow 
that some especial training is needed in view of unexpected 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 213 

emergencies, as the good soldier is taught to prepare for 
surprise, and to be always on his guard. Yet it is utterly 
idle to hope by any code of rules, much less by any tricks 
of memory or little arts of speech, to supply the place of 
that thorough training which is the only guarantee of suc- 
cess and security against surprise. You must seriously 
study every subject, and observe every object with a prac- 
tical eye, and merge, or rather complete, the connoisseur in 
the man of affairs. You have already taken one step for- 
ward in your method ; for while you begun your college 
course by studying boohs as such, and confining mainly 
yourselves to your manuals, you have now for some time 
been busy with subjects, and your most important exercises 
have compelled you to form and state your views of certain 
subjects from various references and meditations. You are 
now to take a second step forward, and study not only 
subjects, but for objects. You are not only to write themes 
and rehearse essays, but to make arguments and plead 
causes. There is a vast deal of advantage as well as of 
difficulty in this transition ; and your way of meeting it is 
in great part to decide whether you will plod on in the old 
school-boy routine, or strike out freshly and manfully in the 
paths of practical life, with your eye fixed upon the work 
set before you. A good speaker's eye and tone tell you in 
the beginning that he knows what he is about, and not only 
has something to say, but something to say it for; and he is 
not as one that beateth the air. The habit of studying 
subjects thus for a practical object will give you a method 



214 AMERICAN LIFE. 

of arranging, illustrating, and urging your thoughts that will 
become to you a second nature. 

How to divide a subject is a point of much importance, 
and one that has been much discussed. The masters of 
rhetoric give us valuable suggestions ; but these amount to 
little unless we illustrate, and correct, and enlarge them 
by our own experience. It is always well for you while read- 
ing or hearing a speech, or oration to analyze it into its 
constituent parts, and see clearly the members and their 
bearing on each other and on the main point. You will 
find that there is a comparative anatomy in the limbs of 
speeches as in nature, and that a few types constantly re- 
peat themselves with variations. But every wise and earn- 
est speaker will have the principle even if he have not the 
theory ; and books of rhetoric no more originate the idea 
of the Exordium and the Peroration, etc., than they origi- 
nated prose itself. The best of these books are good helps, 
as already hinted, and no young man of your age can do 
better than to review what the masters of eloquence say 
of proper preparation. No little work will stir and help 
you more than the admirable treatise of Theremin upon 
" Eloquence as a Virtue." It will not only give you excel- 
lent ideas of style and arrangement, but quicken your 
manliness, and do much to shame you out of the shambling 
slipshod habits and bloodless expression that so often 
characterize bookish men, and make them compare unfavor- 
ably with men of less culture, and with more fire and 
better aim. 

If you find yourself caught before an audience, and have 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 215 

little or no time to prepare a speech, just put yourself upon 
your previous training ; look at the subject in its main fea- 
tures ; see how much, how worthy, how important it is ; 
apply, if you will, the categories of your logic as to quan- 
tity, quality, and relation; make the most simple and 
obvious arrangement of your thoughts, beginning with some 
statement of principles of truth, following with some lead- 
ing point of duty, and closing with urging the thoughts 
home with persuasive sympathy and personal regard. You 
may be sorely troubled by being taken unawares and not 
knowing what in the world to say. I believe that it is 
Quintilian who says that every practiced orator should have 
a supply of loci communes, or commonplaces, which he 
should fall back upon whenever he is in danger of break- 
ing down from loss of memory or want of preparation. 
This may do in desperate cases; but a shrewd audience 
will soon find out the trick, and know when a speaker is 
drifting on the tide and does not know where he is, and 
when he is making headway ; and it is far better to express 
the first genuine conviction that really belongs to the sub- 
ject and the hour than to launch forth into the most ambi- 
tious generalities. A vast deal depends upon your 
beginning, and if you start with a sincere, unaffected tone, 
and with a genuine conviction, you are almost sure to get 
through with credit. An earnest man will be pretty sure 
to have something to say upon any important subject; and 
even if he is at loss at first what to say, he knows how 
to confess his inability or ignorance, or to ask help in such 
a way as to give grace even to his defects, and make them 



216 AMERICAN LIFE. 

more eloquent than a pedant's learning or a blusterer's dec- 
lamation. In fact there is nothing better than naturalness ; 
and a man who is accustomed to speaking may be sure to 
meet every crisis tolerably well, if he will only be content 
to seem to be what he is, and to make sincerely any re- 
mark that really comes to him, and add to his sincerity 
modesty and good-will. Sometimes truthfulness to his 
convictions will not allow him to say much, and very little 
thought rises to his lips. Better far say that little truth 
than a whole volume of rigmarole forced up for the occa- 
sion. Truthfulness is a virtue that wins favor in the end 
and keeps it when won ; and brevity is a failing that men 
forgive far more readily than prolixity. 

To speak well you must be in rapport not only with your 
own mind, but with your subject and your audience. It is 
really wonderful that this connection is so rarely complete, 
and that such, mishaps come from its absence. Sometimes 
you are out of joint with yourself, and your mind seems 
no more to jump with your tongue than the mind of the 
man in the moon, and you feel that you have no hold of 
yourself. Again your thought, although quite active in a 
certain way, does not enter into the subject, and you are 
very much like an eager horseman who Avants to ride, but 
finds the horse refusing to be mounted, or when mounted, 
insisting upon standing still or pitching the luckless rider 
over his head. Sometimes, moreover, when you and your 
subject get on very well together, you fail to connect with 
the audience, and without having any positive quarrel with 
them, you find yourself as far apart as if they were a thou- 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 217 

sand miles off. You will use every means to establish the 
true relation, to keep your own mind ready at your call ; 
to make it dwell faithfully upon such leading principles as 
are fundamental to all important subjects ; and to take vital 
interest in men, not such as belong to your clique only, but 
in men as men in all the various tempers and conditions of 
the common lot. He is happy who masters this connection 
thoroughly, and agrees with his own soul, his subject, and 
his audience^. He is the good rider who is master of him- 
self, his good steed, and the road, and he goes forth con- 
quering and to conquer. 

Some very interesting and curious phenomena occur when 
this rapport is complete ; and some of the signs that spirit- 
ualists ascribe to supernatural agency are constant atten- 
dants of good extemporaneous speaking. A strange and 
cheering and powerful influence rises up within the speaker, 
and is met and quickened by the subject and the occasion. 
The calmer he is, and the less elevated and blown about by 
passion, the more profoundly he is inwardly moved. 
Thoughts and emotions come to him of themselves with- 
out painful seeking, and the subject opens itself to him as 
if it were a part of his own brain or heart. Words and 
sentences of unusual fitness and beauty come to him of 
themselves, and seem to speak of themselves without 
fatigue of voice or exhaustion of brain or nerve. A re- 
markable bond grows up between speaker and hearers; 
the audience light up with a mild glow, and a lambent 
brightness almost transfigures each head in the speaker's 
eye, as at the great Pentecost ; while the whole assembly 

J 



218 AMERICAN LIFE. 

seems to be informed with one life, and the thousand souls 
are drawn together as one spiritual body. 

I have talked with a great many distinguished extempore 
speakers, and while they are almost universally reluctant to 
trust to any marvelous influences, and disposed to insist 
upon careful thought and frequent and exact writing to 
guard against looseness and repetition, they allow that there 
is something in their best oratorical experiences that passes 

their understanding. Our friend C , who is unsurpassed 

by any living preacher in extempore power, alike of lan- 
guage, thought, and tone, affirms that he sometimes, in his 
best hours, loses all conscious hold upon his mind and 
speech, and while perfectly sure that all is going on well in 
his attic, it seems to him that somebody else is talking up 
there ; and he catches himself wondering who under the 
sun that fellow is who is driving on at such a rate. Car- 
penter, the physiologist, speaks of what he calls " uncon- 
scious cerebration," or states in which the brain works with- 
out any conscious effort to do it, and without any conscious- 
ness of what it is doing of itself, as when a man wakes in the 
morning and finds his thinking much in advance of where 
he left it when he went to sleep, or even some hard problem 
solved or knotty questions answered. The cause of these 
phenomena undoubtedly lies somewhere in those organs 
that are allied to the heart and stomach and lungs, and are 
moved by the sympathetic nerves, so as to be more auto- 
matic than voluntary, more powers of nature than of voli- 
tion. How far this involuntary action can be extended, 
and how far carried up into the higher plane of intelli- 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 219 

gence and activity, we can not say ; but it is evident that 
whatever partakes of the character of habit partakes of this 
power, for habit, however painfully formed, becomes a sec- 
ond nature, and is automatic, or goes of itself. 

This automatic action rids the extenrpore speaker of much 
care, anxiety, and toil, and carries him forward through much 
of his work without solicitude or conscious effort ; but it is 
full of dangers, and if he trusts wholly to it he loses his 
higher inspiration and force, and sinks down into an autom- 
aton, like a barrel-organ, that, when wound up, can play 
over all i.ts old tunes. Some speakers and hosts of talkers 
are spoiled in this way, and they think themselves inspired 
because by practice they have so* much of the " gift of the 
gab" that they can run on without limit and without 
fatigue, until all but themselves are tired out. The good 
speaker may cultivate and use this automatic power ; but 
he must never trust wholly to it, nor even be satisfied un- 
less in every thing he does he is conscious of putting forth 
some fresh effort and earnest thought, and rising higher 
than before, instead of drifting away upon the easy level, 
or floating down the still easier descending current. He 
may, perhaps, through constant striving and interior faith, 
make such connections with the Supreme Wisdom and Will 
as to rise into a higher region of light and peace, and so 
partake of a motion and a rest that are not of himself or of. 
nature, but of God. Great eloquence has always something 
of this character, and all great words come from and return 
to the World Eternal. 

Every speaker, however unpretending, needs faith — 



220 AMERICAN LIFE. 

I do not mean faith in himself alone, but in God and 
his own vocation — to make him speak well and to carry 
him through difficulties. It is really wonderful what 
relief you find by simply renouncing anxiety after you 
have do*ue what you can, and by putting yourself tran- 
quilly ivpon your devout trust. This acts like a charm upon 
the powers of the mind, and rallies them very much as a 
moment's loss of one's self in sleep sometimes makes a new 
man of us, and refreshes all the springs of feeling and ac- 
tion. Without going into the theological question of the 
effect of faith in winning divine grace, it is clear that it 
marvelously dismisses worry and unrest, and calms and 
quickens all the faculties, and especially recruits those 
automatic functions of mind and body that are so vital 
to all easy and effective action. 

There are plenty of anecdotes to illustrate this fact, and 
every man of experience can add somewhat to the collec- 
tion. Bautain, whose book is, on the whole, the best on the 
subject of extempore speaking, as already hinted, gives an 
interesting account of his escape from a terrible perplexity 
by a simple act of devotion. He was to preach before the 
royal family, and made the accustomed careful preparation, 
thinking out his entire sermon, and drawing up an exact 
and elaborate plan, but not taking any manuscript with him 
into the pulpit, for this is forbidden by French usage. On 
entering the church he chanced to see some unexpected or 
offensive person, and at once the whole subject and' plan of 
the sermon went out of his head, and he could not get the 
least clew to it by any process of association. What should 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 221 

he do ? To break down was public disgrace before the 
court and the world, and dishonor to his profession. To 
go on seemed out of the question. The time came for him 
to offer the usual prayer hefore preaching. He calmly knelt 
down and prayed for grace, either to bear the mortification 
or to unseal his memory and his lips. In a moment the 
spell was broken that had bound him, and his subject and 
plan came fully to mind. He preached effectually, and 
thanked God for his benignity. 

Undoubtedly his calmness did much to rally his powers ; 
and it is an indispensable requisite to all extempore 
speaking that, however careful your previous medita- 
tion, the moment you rise to speak you must dismiss all 
anxiety, and comply literally with the precept of Christ to 
his disciples when he sent them forth to preach : " Take no 
thought what ye shall speak, for in that same hour it shall 
be given you what ye shall say." True it is whatever may 
be the cause, that the tongue is more fluent and the mind 
more collected precisely in proportion as mistrust is put 
away, and we surrender ourselves in peaceful faith to 
the subject and the occasion. 

God bless you, my young friends, in your opening career. 
You have cheering prospects before you ; and I almost 
envy you, Tom, your opportunity to carry a scholar's cul- 
ture and principles into our great mercantile world, and 
bear your witness, as the years may call, for all the great 
interests of business, patriotism, humanity, and religion. 
Very few merchants among us have a thorough education, 
and are able to speak with force, depth, and elegance upon 



222 AMERICAN LIFE. 

elevated subjects, although there are many who can give 
you lessons in practical sagacity, and read character and 
circumstance as keenly as any of us students can. Do not 
shrink from your position, but be indeed a high-minded 
merchant, true to all the loyalities that ennoble character 
and give dignity to trade. 

You, R., begin your profession at a signal period, and 
you will need all your strength, learning, and enthusiasm 
to speak to our restless, inquisitive, but not godless age, 
upon the momentous subjects that are now challenging 
public attention as never before. Your professional 
training will be thorough, without doubt, and your 
learning will be apt and ample ; yet you will bring little to 
pass unless your voice and pen catch the living spirit of 
mankind, and whatever is truly human kindles your love 
and enlists your labor. As your tongue burns with the true 
fire your pen will borrow its glow; you will write more elo- 
quently and easily as you speak more earnestly, and you 
will speak more exactly and eloquently as you write with 
greater care ; and tongue and pen will educate each other, 
and carry out the work of these years of scholastic study. 

Your father is a practiced and effective extempore 
speaker, and he will give y.ou the light of his experience. 
I can only quote my poor doings in this field to encourage 
you to persevere in training yourself for your work, in firm 
faith that you can overcome all difficulties and do great 
good and enjoy great comfort by this accomplishment. I 
do not see how I could have lived to this day without being 
freed from the bondage of the pen, and without having 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 223 

learned long ago to speak easily when called on for a 
word. The relief is incalculable ; and while most of the 
occasions for casual speaking are better met by off-hand ad- 
dress than by elaborate writing, there are numberless occa- 
sions when it is impossible to write, and a man must be 
dumb or speak as he is moved. For over thirty years I 
have kept ujd this habit, week by week, sometimes day by 
day ; and sometimes have been carried through odd passa- 
ges as well as sore perplexities by the practice. A man is 
sometimes ashamed of the favor he wins by a few chance 
words fitly and accidentally spoken, and your father will 
probably tell you instances without number from his own 
eventful and distinguished career. One or two incidents I 
will allude to, in order to illustrate the power of off-hand 
speaking in helping a man without his knowing it. 

I remember, many years ago, not long after leaving col- 
lege, being at a philanthropic meeting in a church of the 
straitest sect, when a terrible storm broke over the town. 
The lightning flashed, and the thunder pealed, and the 
wind blew a gale. Suddenly the whole church seemed in 
a blaze, a great crash was heard, the glass shivered in some 
of the windows, and we thought the building struck by" 
lightning and the spire falling into the roof and upon the 
pews. The audience were in a panic and too much alarmed 
to move. Youth as I was, I rose to speak without know- 
ing why, but I suppose from the mere habit of saying my 
word when called upon ; and**iow God himself seemed to 
be calling. I did not say much, but did little more than 
ask the people to be calm ; tell them that God rode upon 



224 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the whirlwind and directed the storm ; and even now we 
might see his pillar of fire and hear his trumpet of jubilee 
as we were discussing the needs of his children and the 
great exodus of nations. It was a good Providence or a 
great luck that prompted those unstudied words. The 
people were both calm and kind, and the church got off 
with no harm but the smashing of a huge front-window, 
without loss of limb or life or steeple, while the*grave min- 
ister did not rebuke the young volunteer. 

Later in life, I remember once being present at the 
memorial tribute to our great novelist, Cooper, and taking 
my seat on one side the stage, in an old coat and rumpled 
shirt, without the least expectation of speaking. Why 
should one so obscure be heard in such an assembly as that 
now presided over by Webster, and honored by Bryant, Ban- 
croft, Irving, and other lights of letters? But it -happened 
that some of the chief personages who had been relied upon 
failed to appear, and perhaps it was Ash Wednesday that 
kept away the clerical dignitaries who were to represent 
their profession. The Secretary — who was a strange man, 
and now gone from the earth, where we trust he finds and 
makes less trouble than here — probably gave my name to 
the President, and Daniel Webster called your poor friend 
to the floor, before that blaze of intellect and beauty in old 
Tripler Hall. That I survived that ordeal, and did not run 
away, nor sink into the floor, nor make a fool of myself, nor 
lose all my friends, was owiugto the grace of God and the ha- 
bit of off-hand speaking, that had become so inveterate as to 
act unconsciously upon me before being called up, and make a 



OFF-HAND SPEAKING. 225 

little speech probably in the brain as covertly as the heart 
secrets its blood. I blessed the old days of the " Literati 
in Fumo ; " thanked God, and took courage. Now dear T. 
and R., I bid you do the same. Faint heart never won fair 
lady nor made a fair speech. 



J2 



X. 



Art Among the People. 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 22 U 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 

T1T7E are glad to write this word now in a generous and 
* popular sense, and to speak of " Our Artists " as if 
our people knew whom we mean, and wished to know more 
about them. We can rgmember the time when art had no 
public position among us, and there was no very sharp line of 
distinction between a painter of signs or houses and a painter 
of portraits or landscapes ; and very likely if the merits of 
the two classes had been tested by general vote, the former 
would be the winning side, because appealing to the more 
universal want and covering the more surface. The change 
is now quite decided, although not as emphatic and univer- 
sal as it ought to be ; and there is often an ugly proximity 
of popular association between art and artifice, or the artist 
and the mere showman, the close student and faithful work- 
man, who takes the truth of nature for his standard, and 
the mere trickster whose aim is, by some cunning slight of 

of hand, to make things appear what they are not, and to 

- 
leave nature to the dogs. Undoubtedly real artists still 

suffer keenly from the stings and arrows of the rude and 



230 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ignorant, and many a gifted and well-trained painter finds 
his very excellencies set against him by the superficial ob- 
server, and hideous patches of green, and yellow, and scar- 
let preferred to his modest tints, and really brilliant, yet 
wisely subdued climax of tones. But we must all suffer 
if we aspire, and artists must not think that they are the only 
people against whom the world has a spite, and whose toes 
were born to be trod upon. All men who have fine natures, 
and who do fine work, are in the same box, and often chide 
their stars that they were not born on a more celestial 
planet than this mother earth. So far as sensitiveness is 
concerned, a large number of us all are of the artistic tem- 
perament, and most of us must suffer from the world's 
coldness without having any original genius to carry its fire 
into the enemy's country, and to keep our feet warm at 
their hearth-stones. This experience should give us more 
of a fellow-feeling for artists, and make us rejoice in their 
having fair play dealt out to them for our sakes as well as 
theirs, or in the hope that all sensitive natures may in the 
end have better appreciation under the wings of art and its 
genial muses. 

Many signs encourage us to believe that the day of Art, 
as a high intellectual, social and moral interest, has already 
dawned upon our country. The word itself is its own in- 
troduction and proof. The time has been when people 
started at its three mystical letters, and did not know what 
under the sun they meant, whether the art of printing, or 
baking, or cooking, or farming or what not ; and even when 
they learned to recognize the several classes of artists, they 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 231 

were not prepared to accept the truth that embraces them all, 
and salute^4rZ itself as master of all the separate beautiful arts. 
Even now there is not so full an understanding of its mean- 
ing as there should be, and the fact of art is more obvious 
to most people than its philosophy. They see clearly that 
a large number of persons of widely various tastes and 
pursuits associate together congenially in the love of beau- 
tiful arts, and that an inmortant body of literature is rising 
up to illustrate and reward their affinities. Our young, 
children, moreover in their way get some idea of the new 
and purer tastes that are showing' themselves in their 
school songs and lessons, and even in their plays; and 
there are few of our bright girls and boys who do not find 
out while in their teens, that the Beautiful in the method 
of God himself has a place between the Good and the 
True, and that the study of the beautiful, or aesthetics, is 
a part of all generous education. Kind Heaven itself 
bountifully helps out the illustration not only by so flooding 
the earth, and waters, and skies with scenes and elements 
of loveliness, but by liberally bestowing more interior gifts, 
and endowing a considerable portion of the young with 
decided tastes and talents for the beautiful arts. Every 
year some new spark of genius is flashing out from the spirit 
of some unobtrusive girl or boy, who hardly dares to believe 
the truth that great nature whispers into the ear ; and there 
is no more encouraging view of the future of our artists 
than the prospect of their being constantly the educators 
of a new and susceptible generation who can generally 



232 AMERICAN LIFE. 

enjoy, and in time study and rival in part the master-pieces 
set before them. 

We are not indeed satisfied with the present position of 
Art among our people, but we are sure that it is now put upon 
the right way. No pursuit amounts to much of any thing 
until it is made a regular profession, and as such is respect- 
ed by its own members. Even genius needs its own circle 
of fellowship for its defence and comfort ; and although its 
great productions may at last challenge the world and fight 
their way to fame, there are long and weary periods of 
preparation and experiment, in which friendly and judicious 
association is invaluable, and genius is consoled and strength- 
ened, while common talent is educated and almost formed 
under the kindly auspices. We need only ask what the 
learned professions would be without fellow-feeling and 
common usages, in order to show how desolate and limited 
must be the path of our artists without professional associa- 
tion. We rejoice to see so many proofs of their growing 
respect for their work and for each other. No corner-stone 
has been laid within our remembrance that has cheered us 
more than that under the foundation of that noble temple 
of the beautiful arts, the National Academy of Design, 
lately erected in this city. The readiness with which the 
requisite funds have been subscribed is an encouraging 
sign of the state of social opinion as to the claims of Art, 
as well as an honorable tribute to the worth of our artists. 
In one sense, indeed, they are luckier than most other pro- 
fessions, for there is no open split in their conventicle, no 
schools of practice at swords' points with each other, as 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 233 

among the doctors, nor rival sects as among the clergy. 
Into this new gate, called Beautiful, the whole tribe will go, 
and no shibboleth will be sj>oken to divide the votaries in 
two. That artists are indeed wholly without envyings and 
strifes we do not believe ; for we have taken it for granted 
that Paradise was lost a great while ago,- and we have 
known some who could make the old Eden bloom anew 
beneath their magic pencil, who yet could not exorcise 
from their own heart and home and social walk the hissing 
serpent who brought discord into that first garden of celes- 
tial innocence and love. It is something, however, that 
these strifes do not break fellowship, and the guild of Art 
is one in form and name. We trust that the little feud be- 
tween the old and the new school of Art in our city will be 
healed, and the old will be more progressive, and the new 
more gentle. and catholic. The "New Path" ought not to 
break away from the old, nor the old from the new. 

We confess to being very desirous to have our artists 
recognized by our people at large as an essential profession, 
and to have Art itself ranked among the substantial inter- 
ests of life. It is not enough that their best works are to 
a certain extent appreciated, and do not go begging 
for purchasers. Their work, or calling, ought to be esteem- 
ed like that of the great professions, and generous place 
should be given to it in society, patriotism, and religion. 
We are not satisfied to have any true man estimated merely 
by a fortunate hit or two before the public ; and any law- 
yer, physician, clergyman, or merchant would be aggrieved 
at having no standing accorded to him except what he wins 



234 AMERICAN LIFE. 

by striking or exceptional successes, or even by any con- 
spicuous works, without regard to the habits, tastes, and 
convictions that they imply. We are all of us most happy 
when we are treated as good for something in ourselves, as 
belonging of right to worthy society, without being obliged 
constantly to show our ticket of admission, and to confess 
thus that we were let in by purchase or favor, and do not of 
ourselves make one of the circle. Nothing is more morti- 
fying than to find that we are prized merely for some arti- 
ficial act or casual accomplishment, and not for the culture 
and experience that have cost us so many years of careful 
study and thought. What can be more insulting, for ex- 
ample to a cultivated and high-minded clergyman than to 
be treated as if he were intended merely to say grace at 
table or help out the stateliness of a funeral or the elegance 
of a wedding by Sis pleasing elocution and graceful gesture 
and attitude. He is not at ease until he is received among 
gentlemen as one of them, and his place is recognized and 
honored, whether he happens to have anything official to 
do or not. Now in precisely this way, or according to this 
principle, our best artists ought to be recognized ; and not 
merely for their conspicuous works, but for the culture from 
which they emanate, the tastes and associations which they 
imply, they are to be sought and respected. As a class, 
we need them in society, and the ideas and principles of 
study and practice which they follow ought to be carefully 
cherished in conversation and instruction. 

We are confident that both parties will be gainers by 
giving to our artists more to do with the education of our 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 235 

children. The rules and laws of aesthetics are as important 
as any branch of liberal study, and there is no good reason 
for limiting them merely to the art of rhetoric, when the 
other beautiful arts are so much more winning to the young 
eye and ear. Drawing is the true art of seeing,. and the 
hand is as flexible in childhood as the tongue, and may 
learn to make form as easily as the tongue makes speech. 
How many of us who are fair linguists and good arithme- 
ticians have cause to lament that our fingers are so ignorant 
of the pencil ; and we are puzzled to give the slightest 
sketch of a landscape, house, or tree, or even to draw a 
rock or a gate well enough to give a stranger a tolerable 
idea of the original. Hardly any accomplishments do we 
more envy our children than this — the power to take 
nature upon the wing, and bring home from their rides and 
rambles little sketches of the pretty things they have seen. 
If color is added to drawing the greater the charm ; and 
undoubtedly a judicious teacher will find some taste for the 
beautiful in most of our young people, and can help parents 
much in deciding the aptitudes of their children for useful 
and ornamental arts. 

In this way the range of employment might be much 
extended among artists themselves, and a vastly wider 
scope be secured to school education. There are a great 
many excellent men, of good literary gifts, who could very 
profitably vary their labor and enlarge their resources by 
teaching, without in the least interfering with their profes- 
sional standing. Nay, why may not the teaching of Art be 
of itself a vocation ; and thus the title Doctor of Arts, as 



236 AMERICAN LIFE. 

well as of Medicine, Divinity, and Laws, find its way into our 
Academies ? We are confident that the tone of education 
and society would be vastly elevated by such influence, and 
taste would gain delicacy and sentimeut upon all matters 
of life. .We are often- in a very bad way because we do not 
know what the beautiful really is ; and every little city in 
the land wastes in a single year in miserable shams, poor 
artifices of showy dress and unmeaning furniture, wealth 
enough to build a stately hall of the beautiful arts, and fill 
it with fitting paintings, if not statuary. Our whole stand- 
ard needs reforming, and the sooner our children begin to 
note the difference between art and artificiality, the sub- 
stance of the beautiful and the mere show, our purses and 
our principles will be much the better for the change. 

True it is that all fine tastes are costly, but not nearly so 
costly as the mock tastes that are usually ealled superfine; 
and Miss Flora M'Flimsey is a far more expensive compan- 
ion for our girls than any of the old Muses or their votaries. 
If dress is the ruling love, and if the dress must be in the 
height of the reigning mode, each costume must cost a tol- 
erable picture or marble, and becomes worthless almost as 
soon as it is worn ; while the appetite that it feeds, unlike 
the taste for beautiful art, becomes more and more impa- 
tien of the simplicity of nature, and more and more raven- 
ous for extravagance and ostentation. It would certainly 
be a great gain every way if we could apply the true aesthe- 
tics to our houses, dress, tables, and way of living in gen- 
eral. We could then seek the things that are best, and 
often prefer what is very cheap and sinuple as being most 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 237 

beautiful, while the vulgar rich rush after folly and ugliness, 
thinking it must be charming because it is so very clear. 
In fact, the really beautiful is cheap in comparison with the 
merely showy; and a truly artistic eye will find untold 
riches in every landscape, water, and wood, and may teach 
the skilful hand to cull or to copy rare charms of color or 
proportion on every side, and adorn the home with a naivS 
simplicity that wealth itself might covet. No homes are 
more winning to us than those pretty little nests that are 
so bird-like, with all their rustic adornings of colored leaves, 
and airy grasses, and trailing vines, and the like natural 
gems of art. When the pencil adds its skill, and a gifted 
son or daughter enriches the walls with a few spirited 
drawings or paintings the chann is complete, and Art and 
Nature help each other out delightfully. The culture im- 
plied in such tastes is a valuable part of education, and the 
homes where our best artists are intimate win from them a 
kind of atmosphere of refinement that favors all beautiful 
growths ancl sentiment. What better can we do for a 
bright girl, next to forming her religious principles, than to 
open her vision to the loveliness with which God has been 
pleased to fill creation, and make fact of what the poet 
says : 

" To her there's a story in every breeze, 
And a picture in every wave ! " 

When ample means allow, the home may welcome the 
artist in more substantial shape, and set up his choicest 
works among the household treasures. It is not as expen- 



238 AMERICAN LIFE. 

sive a luxury, relatively, as it is often thought to be, to in- 
dulge in this taste ; for a picture of high merit can be had 
for a less sum than is often given for a mirror or a set of 
curtains, and th,e picture is for all time, while the furniture 
may be worth little or nothing when the mode changes. 
Good pictures are a legacy from father to son — or, to use a 
more financial figure, they are a good investment ; and a 
really first rate collection of paintings is as good as silver 
and gold for time of need, and less liable to the thieves that 
break through and steal. We have friends who have tried 
this- experiment to the astonishment of their acquaintance, 
and found that, after being laughed at for extravagance in 
spending fifteen or twenty thousand dollars upon choice 
pictures, they could get their money back, and even more, 
after the dark day had come upon them ; while the mere 
modists, who had spent all they could spare in dress, furni- 
ture, and feasting, found that little was left, and they could 
not have their cake and eat it too. 

We often wonder that our men of wealth do not give 
more subjects of native interest to our artists, aud try to 
fill their walls with more of the riches of our own rivers, 
lakes, vales, and mountains. Every man who has lived in 
the country and made his fortune in the city must be 
haunted by charming scenes about the old homestead that 
he would gladly keep before him in his more artificial life. 
What would you or I give, dear reader, to get hold of 
Kensett, Hart, Colman, Whitredge, Inness, Haseltine, 
Cropsey, Casilear, Gignoux, Bierstadt, or Church for a month 
or two, so as to have them take suitable sketches of the 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 239 

charmed spots about the old country home, and in due sea- 
son enshrine them in gems of choice art that would make 
great Nature our household friend, and carry into the shady 
side of life all the sunshine and witchery of our early days. 
Human life, too, how rich it is in subjects, exacting though 
they be; and too few of our artists may be able to put a 
merry girl or boy, or a lovely wife or daughter,' upon can- 
vas and make them altogether at home there, in speaking 
form and attitude. Yet some can do it, and those homes 
are happy who can have the work of their hands and em- 
balm the dying years in unfading beauty — nay, rather 
keep the passing years alive, so that no hue nor trait nor 
smell of death shall be upon them. We know that # all this 
care and cost will be called needless by some, and the pho- 
tographer will be raised to the place before held by the 
painter. All honor to the photograph ; but it is no substi- 
tute for high art ; and saying nothing of the f#ct that it 
takes an artist to make a good photographer, we must have 
an artist to complete the work, and virtually take the por- 
trait over again, since the camera is bound by its own na- 
ture to distort and falsify in respect to proportion and fore- 
shortening. Art only, original art, can hold the mirror up 
to nature, and bring into play not only the form but the life 
of beings and things. The fact is certainly so, whatever 
may be its philosophy ; and the photograph of any living 
thing, whether flower or face, is tame and dead compared 
with the sketch of a true artist. Upon stone-walls the 
camera is mighty as it is minute, but upon living things it, 
insists upon putting something of that same look of stone. 



240 AMERICAN LIFE. 

No photographer can give the real man, as our best portrait 
painters and designers can do. Elliott, and William Hunt, 
are truer to 'the face of human nature than the sun, and 
Eastman Johnson, and Leutze, Church and Bierstadt put 
more truth into the canvas than the camera does. 

We are for opening to our artists a wider range in our 
households, alike as teachers and workers, and what we say 
especially of painters we would say of the whole craft. We 
would be as hospitable to them in our national and public 
edifices ; and we are by no means so straitlaced as to look 
upon religion as wholly outside of their province. The 
wonder often is that we have not more of true national art, 
and we %llow that there is some room for the wonder, re- 
spectable as are our galleries at Washington, Philadelphia, 
New York, and Boston. The answer probably is 'that we 
have had no great national enthusiasm since the recent 
great progress of art-culture among us; and that now we 
have resolved to be a nation we may look for something of 
the patriotic fire in the pencil and the chisel. Great things 
must be done before they can be carved and painted ; and 
the sculptor and painter are now called for to immortalize 
valor and public spirit on hundreds of battle-fields and in 
thousands of villages and towns. There will be no dearth 
of material now, and the artist and photographer have 
sketched our heroes and their deeds at first sight, so as to 
put all the needed materials before the eye of the genius 
that is to come or has come. There is nothing in our native 
sculpture, in a modest way, finer than the groups of stat- 
uettes by our gifted young friend Rogers, and his " Union 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 241 

Refugees," his "Scouts," "Recruits," and others, are a 
cheering promise of what his chisel, with others, will do for 
us when the new generation catches the rising inspiration, 
and marble as well as canvas plays the historian and poet 
to ages yet to be. Some of our artists, such as Gifford, 
Colyer, and the like, have themselves mingled in the strife, 
and not only their hand but their spirit will do much to 
animate the whole craft. As a craft they are evidently very 
patriotic, and some of the best things that they have lately 
done have been done in honor of the country and the flag. 
Religion in America is no stranger to art, yet ecclesias- 
tically speaking, there has not been much relation between 
the two excej)t in architecture. A very few churches, indeed 
have some fine statuary, but these, for the most part, are 
almost apologized for by being made to serve a sepulchral 
use. We think highly of memorial art, whether in the 
chapel or the cemetery ; and since our. gifted young friend 
Gambrill designed for us a memorial of a dear sister that 
enshrined her saintly life in stone we have loved the whole 
craft of architects and sculptors, and prayed for the time 
when they may show their taste, and genius in monumental 
marble. A mural tablet or a modest tombstone may be a 
speaking biography, a sculptured poem, and may be worth 
more to the heart than a costly pile of soulless stone-cut- 
ting. It would be well if, even in this way, the sculptor, 
and with him the architect, could find entrance and larger 
liberty in our churches, as the emancipation from the old 
thralldom, once begun, would not end there, and it would 
soon be thought as proper to put a historic or ideal head on 

K 



242 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the porch or by the side of the altar as upon a tomb. Pic- 
tures are very rarely introduced into our sanctuaries, except 
in stained glass, which are, after all, more glaring and osten- 
tatious than any of the masterpieces of the pencil, either 
ancient or modern. Yet we have never seen any offence 
taken at a modest altar-piece over a Protestant chancel, and 
have no doubt that a church that would fitly j^resent a few 
choice Scripture paintings upon its walls, in the vein of our 
best Christian art, would meet a positive want in any of 
our great cities. We should hope to be saved the infliction 
of worshiping in constant presence of many of the custom- 
ary ecclesiastical monstrosities that cover cathedral walls. 
Tortured saints, pinched and starved hermits, grim inquis- 
itors, ghostly monks and nuns, are not to us the best 
impersonations of the Christian religion ; and we like much 
better the humanity which God made and His grace has 
redeemed and consecrated all around us. If our best Chris- 
tian faith and life could be fitly translated into art our 
churches would need no better adorning. Childhood and 
womanhood and manhood could be presented in an ideal 
truth as well as beauty that would edify the affections as 
well as educate the taste ; and the good old Scriptures, both 
the Old Testament and the New, could come out of the 
ancient parchment and look us in the face, and talk to us 
again in very spirit and life. The better study of the 
Bible has made it virtually a new book, restored its fresh- 
ness without impairing its essential sanctity; and when 
Art will do for the church walls what criticism and travel 
and thought have done for the minister's homily, it will be 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 243 

anew clay for lovers of the beautiful in our hallowed 
shrines. 

Probably most thoughtful people are ready to allow 
sacred art a place in the education of their children ; and 
Bible pictures and statuettes are marked and abounding 
features of our time. It is surely no great stretch of lib- 
erality to assign a suitable place for the collection, and 
already the Sunday 'school-room is in many cases becoming 
a rich repository of art. Some of our toughest old Puri- 
tans have made up their minds to this innovation ; and, 
while they would perhaps be horrified at the sight of a 
picture or statue in church, they take positive delight in 
worshiping with their girls and boys in a pretty chapel, 
where the' fountain plays, and the roses bloom, and fair 
scenes and faces look out from the canvas on every side of 
the walls, as if to ask why should any thing that God has 
cleansed be called common or unclean ? We believe in a 
new day of Christian Art, and are quite sure that it will 
come as soon as the ban is taken off from its works that 
has already been lifted from the head of Nature, and the 
soul is as free to enjoy the worthy works of men's hands as 
it is now free to enjoy the handiwork of God. 

It might be well for both parties if Art and Religion 
could be brought into closer personal relations, and our 
artists and clergy could see and know more of each otjber. 
Some wit, in one of our late morning papers, makes fun of 
the odd juxtaposition of the two at some of the late art 
reunions, and seems to think it the absurdest thing im- 
aginable. We are not of this mind, and we presume that 



244 AMEltlCAN LIFE. 

the painters would not ask the parsons to chat and make 
speeches if the company was not to their liking. In two 
respects the professions are somewhat alike. They are 
neither of them in danger of accumulating surplus wealth 
or given to the world's sharp ways. The greater part of 
both professions seem to us to be what are called capital 
fellows, and able to enjoy genial and instructive conversa- 
tion together. Each can help out the other's culture 
vastly. Every fair-minded preacher would at once allow 
that many of his figures of speech would be greatly tested 
and corrected by having them tried by the painter's pencil 
to show whether they were made of wood, stone, fish, or 
flesh, or all together, and every writer may get grand hints 
from the thoroughness of a painter's study and the free- 
dom and breadth of his handling. Jhe artist may, perhaps, 
learn to think more deeply from the theologian, and win a 
seriousness and earnestness that the profession much needs. 
We are not about to mount the pulpit and call Art into 
the conventicle, much less decree that every day shall be 
Sunday; but we are sure it would not hurt the whole tribe 
of the easel to hear a good sermon at least once a week, 
and stay out of their studio one day in seven, and give its 
hours to the better affections of the family and the altar. 
Such fine spirits as abound among us would be sure to 
come under a higher motive, to take hold of a better class 
of subjects, and draw far nearer the home life and devout 
sentiment of the people. The free and easy method may 
be carried too far; and true geniality would gain instead of 
losing, if our artists generally were in the way of more 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 245 

thoughtful and devout associations, and in harmony with 
their own best exemplars. All the inspirations are surely 
akin to each other, and he who seeks the spirit of beauty 
in nature and society does well to seek it at the fountain- 
head of Him whose being is the perfect loveliness, and 
whose work is the perfect art. In fact we have of late in- 
clined, in our way of philosophizing, to number all the arts 
among the virtues, and rank them as skilled powers of the 
will in their several degrees and kinds. According to this 
view a noble manhood, gentle, wise, and loyal, is the high- 
est of arts, and shapes all that it touches according to its 
own divine ideal. ■ Each of the beautiful arts is a form of 
the educated will, a power of well-doing after its own 
kind. To paint a good picture is to do a good thing, and 
not merely to dream of doing it ; and the mere sense of 
beauty, without the power of producing it, is no more true 
art than the sentiment of right is acttve virtue, or than that 
he is a charitable man who says, be warm and clothed and 
lifts no finger to help the poor. 

We do not say that fine art is of itself complete moral- 
ity, or perfect virtue ; but it is virtue as far as it goes, or 
virtue in the aesthetic order, and having the same relation 
of active service to good taste that moral rectitude has to 
good feeling. Great gain, will come from a better study 
of all the virtue which flows from the supreme good 
through the human will, and we shall thus correct the 
error of denying a moral quality to artistic excellence. 
Why had not Fra Angelico's pictures as much sanctity as 
the prayers with which he ever initiated the work of his 



246 AMERICAN LIFE. 

pencil ? And if the painter's" sancitity exalts his art into 
virtue, why should not his truthfulness and fidelity, his 
courage, humanity, friendship, patriotism, or whatever 
worthy trait puts power into his pictures, have place 
among the virtues? For ourselves, we believe that the 
true artist, like the orator, must be the good man, and his 
work it is to present things good and true in the forms that 
are beautiful and sublime. His art is the virtue of true 
taste in its active energy, the excellence of the assthetic 
faculty in its force as well as its sensibility. He surely is a 
favored man in this, for he works in God's school and is 
one of his favored children. He makes his wares after the 
divine pattern ; and if he makes them well, each little flower, 
or rock, or tree, or face from beneath his pencil is worthy 
of a place in that creation upon which the Maker looked 
with favor and saw that it was good. We do not deny 
moral excellence indeed to the useful arts, and have respect 
for every rake and spade, every chair and table, that honest 
industry turns out. But obviously every work rises in the 
spiritual scale as it implies a higher range of the intellect, 
will, and affections, and the art that moves in the light of 
universal ideas, inspirations, and fellowship, ranks above 
the mechanism that looks only to special ends and rests in. 
individual instincts and appetites. 

One great glory of Art is the universality of its power as a 
principle of association or assimilation. When men come to- 
gether they must have something to keep them together, and 
the first thing always is to occupy their minds. In barbarous 
times this is done by games, often of cruel spirit ; and not 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 247 

only savages, but people nominally civilized, like the 
Romans, liked nothing better than to see a wrestling-match 
or a sword-fight, secundem artem ; and fair women were in 
glee when an adroit fling was made or a scientific thrust was 
given, no matter how limb or life suffered. The Spanish 
bull-fight is a specimen of the same monstrous art of amus- 
ing ; and our own fairs and elections are apt to turn up 
something of the same temper, in a milder or coarser sort 
of fracas. We have learned, however, generally to keep 
our hold on the animal man without sacrifice of his intel- 
lect and heart, by setting the grinders to work ; and the 
probable cause of the almost universal custom of social 
eating and drinking is not for the sake of the things 
themselves, but for the sake of enjoying them together. 
We are made one in sympathy by any sort of social activ- 
ity, and the ice is broken as soon as all mouths are opened, 
if only by a bit of cake and a cup of tea or glass of wine. 
We will not quarrel with these creature comforts, but we 
may well rejoice that we are finding and using a higher 
order of assimilatives, and making our artists provide them 
for us. The beautiful is the fairy-land of good-fellowship, 
and where Art opens her lists and lifts her pennon, all the 
Graces are ready at once to dance and sing and make 
merry. The beautiful is the play-ground of the fancy and 
affections, and all gentle hearts are opened, and quickened 
by the arts of beauty, whether architecture, sculpture, 
painting, the drama, music, poetry, or, what is perhaps 
master of them all, and fit companion of them all — elo- 
quence. How powerful as an assimulant or socializer is 



248 AMERICAN LIFE. 

our noble Central Park ! Fifty thousand people there are 
met as quiet as a family under the charm of the landscape 
and the spell of the music. How cheap and lasting is that 
banquet of the beautiful ! The band may cease to play when 
night comes on, but the melodies still haunt the ear, and re- 
turn in dreams by day and night. Darkness comes down upon 
grove and water and meadow and hill, but the landscape is 
there still, and will reappear with the dawn, a perpetual 
feast of inexhaustible loveliness to the end of all time ! 
Change the entertainment into coarser materials, and try 
to feast that multitude with food and drink, and how much 
lower the plane of fellowship, and more frequent the out- 
break of rudeness, to say nothing of the vast cost of load- 
ing the tables with good cheer, and repeating it with every 
reunion. But where beautiful Art holds her feasts her 
guests are humanized while they are pleased and assimila- 
ted; and however many come, the marvel always holds, and 
the table is always brimming with plenty, as if none had 
seen or tasted those sweets. 

How rare is that privilege of high art — the privilege of 
always being enjoyed and never lost by fruition. The old 
monks in the reflectory that rejoiced in Leonardo da Vin- 
ci's picture of the Last Supper might well say, " We are 
the shadow, and they — those figures on the wall — are the 
substance." Much more might they have said that the 
painted table was the most abounding one, for it was 
spread with unfailing stores, and surrounded with undying 
life, while the convent board had to be supplied anew after 
every meal. Every picture surely is a lordly dish that 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 249 

thousands taste without exhausting, and every fine sculp- 
ture is a rich goblet whose juices ages do not drain nor 
dry. 

We like to meet once in a while with our artist friends, 
and chat with them over the social table about the pictures 
that line the walls j and as we last had this pleasure, at the 
Artist Fund Exhibition, an occasion of unusual enjoyment 
and encouragement, we could not but compare the evanes- 
cence of the good cheer on the table with that which glowed 
on the canvas. The sparkling glass was soon empty in the 
hand, but when sliall that brimming cup of beauty be ex- 
hausted in the grasp of high art ? How many have drunk 
inspiration from that prophet soul of Allston's creating, and 
how many shall drink it still! Yet the glow of that eye is 
not dimmed, nor is that force abated. And look at that 
other and still more marvelous canvas, in which Rosa Bon- 
heur's touch has put all the dash and fun and fire of the 
whole horse tribe ; who shall exhaust that world of over- 
flowing animal life, or what death shall strike down those 
prancing steeds and frolicsome ponies ? Rosa herself in art 
is unfading, whatever time may do with her striking face and 
fingers. Her muse always grasps that same pencil, and 
looks out from that eye, and speaks from that lip. Muse 
and Madonna are to the devotee in this respeet alike — 
always fresh and pure. Ars semper virgo, the old poets 
ought to have said, whether they did or not. 

We must all be gainers by giving our artists more to do 
with our social and public festivities, and enabling them to 
bring their tastes and talents to bear more effectually upon 

K2 



250 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the popular h^art and mind. "We spend enough surely in 
trying to give beauty to our private and public amusements, 
but the confectioner, the wine merchant, the dress-maker, 
the upholsterer, and the pyrotechnist get far more than their 
share. We rejoice in all those social occasions with which 
the hand of art has a leading part, even if it be merely in 
the grouping and the color and light of shade of tableaux 
viva?is, as we sometimes see them. We delight still more 
in those charming reunions, which are increasing in our 
great cities, especially in New York, in which artists gather 
at once their friends and their works, and open studios, and 
fair women and accomplished men throw around the pass- 
ing hours the magic spell of art. Would that there were 
far more of such things, and that our people of culture, 
position, and wealth would take counsel of the artist as 
much as they now do of the florist and confectioner. 

We know no sociality more charming than that which is 
largely leavened by art, and our authors and artists and 
best specimens of the merchant mingle freely and enjoy 
each other's gifts and graces. The Century Club has much 
of this merit, and not only in number but in visible works 
the artists seem to bear the palm ; and while the other 
members are allowed to range over the whole building at 
will, with no especial abiding place, art has its own favored 
hall of exhibition for its sons, where its freshest fruits may 
be seen, without losing its liberty to put its canvas and mar- 
ble and crayon in any vacant spot throughout the edifice. 
Some of the festivals held there in past years give valuable 
hints of what good society might every where be by a little. 



ART AMONG THE PEOPLE. 251 

infusion of taste and genius. A Twelfth Night Ball or a 
Shakspeare's Birth-night Banquet was poetry and romance 
as well as festivity ; and if the times had not been too dark 
very likely the third centennial of Shakspeare's birth and 
the sixth centennial of Dante's that were near at hand, 
would have evoked something of the same good fellow- 
ship and genial intellect. The more of such things the 
better, and they can often be done on a modest scale of 
expense in away to charm and instruct greatly. Any bevy 
of bright girls have grace and talent enough to follow a 
good artist's lead, and to impress their more awkward broth- 
ers and beaux into the work of improvising romance or re- 
viving history or the drama. In fact, if the priest has his 
breviary, in which he notes the scenes, events, and characters 
of the year according to his church rites, the artist, whether 
poet or painter or sculptor, may have his breviary too, in 
which he notes those aspects of nature, those facts of his- 
tory characters of art and letters, that make out the ritual 
of the temple whose gate is called Beautiful. We shall be 
glad to see some attempt in this direction ; and as we are 
quite ready to allow to the artist his right to a priesthood 
of his own and a shrine of his own, with a goodly following 
of devotees, we are also for extending his social sphere, and 
allowing him a large pastoral walk through fields green and 
fresh and varied, with plenty of lambs about him. We like 
to go and see him, and are glad that he is not unwilling to 
come and see us. We have been pretty free with him in 
this off-hand chat, but it has been the freedom of a grateful 
and loving friend, who is willing to be done by as he has 
done. 



XI. 

American Nerves. 



AMERICAN NERVES. 



255 



AMERICAN NERVES. 

THE starry heaven gains in interest and power over us 
with time, and the more we gaze and meditate upon that 
majestic and well-ordered empire of globes, without haste, 
without rest, without a single laggard or a single runaway, 
we can not but be more and more impressed by the contrast 
between the sublime method of the Creator and the de- 
rangement that enters into almost every work of man's 
hands, and sometimes invades the very citadel of his mind. 
It is good for us to be star-gazers more constantly and 
earnestly than ever, and try if we can not read there on 
high something better even than the astronomer's science, 
and ascend to that idea of divine order, which was written 
upon the heavens that it might be copied in the thoughts 
and purposes and methods of the earth. During these late 
magnificent nights we have been on better terms with . the 
heavens than usual, and have, perhaps too fondly, thought 
that Ursa Major and the Pleiades, Venus and Jupiter said 
something even to our dull ears that our readers would be 
willing to listen to without impatience. 



256 AMERICAN LIFE. 

Walk through the wards of an insane asylum, and talk 
here and there with a patient ; mark them in all their rari- 
ties from abject melancholy to raging madness, or read some 
good book on mental disease, like Dr. Ray's recent admira- 
ble hints to our people, with the addition of some philo- 
sophical thoughts from the great German masters of the 
subject; then ask the stars to help you toward some simple 
and comprehensive view of mental health and ailment. 
You will not be long without the needed light. Evi- 
dently the mind, like the universe, has its pervading law, 
and the soul, like the solar system, gravitates according to 
the play of balancing forces and recurring cycles. Our 
earth in her cosmic relations illustrates the affinities, the 
attractions, repulsions, and periodicities of the life of her 
children ; and the true kingdom of God over men must 
copy the polity of the Cosmes, which is its ground-work. 
We do not mean to deal now in dry, far-fetched, or mysti- 
cal correspondence between mind and matter, the soul of 
man and the universe of God, but simply to illustrate the 
laws of mental health by two or three hints from the shin- 
ing heavens. 

It is obvious that the order of the globes is kept by fhe 
play of two forces in regular cycles. Thus our good mother 
earth, towards whom we confess to a growing attachment 
in spite of her manifesting some of the infirmities common 
to us her children, keeps her orbit by being attracted to- 
ward the sun, and at the same time being driven off by her 
own centrifugal force and by the concurrence of these two 
forces in a certain periodicity. Is it not precisely the same 



AMERICAN NERVES. 257 

with the mind in its own relation to its dominant interests ? 
We surely are subject to a constant attraction toward the 
world of nature and society in which we live, and a large 
part of our existence is as much in the passive voice as is 
the relation of the earth to the imperial sun. So, too, like 
the earth, we have a certain force of our own, and much of 
our life is in the active voice, whether for good or for ill. 
Like the earth too, we have our periods, and our existence 
is well ordered as it moves in judicious round in habits that 
repeat the harmony of the spheres. Let us throw out some 
practical thoughts upon each of these aspects of the subject, 
and speak of the healthy condition of the sensitive capaci- 
ties, the active powers, and the periodical habits of the 
mind with an especial eye to our nerves. 

I. In the largest acceptation of the term the sensitive 
capacities comprise the intellectual tastes as well as the 
physical and moral susceptibilities, for these tastes come 
into consciousness by being acted upon, as when the eye 
perceives beauty and the ear music .by the touch of lovely 
sights and sounds upon the senses. A large part of the per- 
ceptive power is sensitive ; and not only in the sensation 
which tells us whether an object is agreeable or disagree- 
able, but in the perception that records its qualities, the 
mind is acted upon at least quite as much as it acts ; and 
even in the highest form of thinking there is some reality, 
visible or invisible, that is impressing itself upon the percep- 
tive faculties. Yet without dwelling longer upon defini- 
tions, but taking the facts of our sensitive capacities as they 
are, it is evident that we do not enjoy mental health until 



258 AMERICAN LIFE. 

our sensibilities are brought under the influence of their 
appropriate objects. 

The eye must feel the light or it is very unhappy, and 
pines and worries almost to distraction when long bereft oi 
the element in which it lives. So, too, the ear must hear 
sound or it virtually starves, and a familiar voice to one who 
has long been immured in solitude and silence is as welcome 
as bread and water to the thirsty and famishing. Even the 
sense of touch must have its object, and after long cessation 
from action, the fingers clutch the pen or staff or hammer or 
sword with absolute delight, and rejoice even in the press- 
ure of any weight upon the muscles that bears witness of the 
mighty power of gravitation to this perhaps lowliest of the 
senses. Terrible disorders evidently ensue when the senses 
are robbed of their due objects, and the diseases that abound 
among people living in seclusion and darkness are owing 
undoubtedly quite as much to want of healthy impressions 
upon the senses as to noxious influence upon the body. 
Pre-eminently are we dependent upon the master senses, 
the eye and ear, for healthy sensibilities, and the Creator 
is our benign physician in the wonderful care which he has 
bestowed u])on His provision for refreshing and healing 
sights and sounds. There is medicine in the brown earth, 
the green grass, the silver waters, the blue heavens, the 
golden day and sable night. There is healing not only in the 
hues of nature, but also in the distances; and after return- 
ing from the open country to our city streets and walks, we 
have a sense of imprisonment within these inexorable bar- 
riers, and the eye for a while, like a caged bird, seems to 



AMERICAN NERVES. 259 

beat against those ruthless bars, and to sigh for the long 
vistas of meadow and valley and mountain and lake and 
river. The sounds of nature, too,' are healing — the bleat- 
ing sheep, the lowing cattle, the chirping crickets, the hum- 
ming bees, the singing birds, and, above all, the human 
voice, whether in playful children or thoughtful and kindly 
men and women. Sometimes a single word heals us of a 
bitter wound, and the despondency that was settling down 
upon us like a dark cloud vanishes at once, and morning 
breaks upon the benighted spirit as at the voice of the lark 
that the poet hears singing at heaven's gate to call up the 
tardy day. Undoubtedly the world was constructed by the 
Creator upon hygienic principles, and we make sad mistakes 
in so often turning away from His benign school for the 
dementing artifices and deceptive nostrums of man's 
device. 

We sin against God's method of treating our senses 
alike by apathy and intensity. If we fail to accept all this 
wonderful provision for our intelligence and comfort, and 
close our eyes and ears to what he sets before us, sad de- 
rangement at once follows, in the form of apathy, whose 
sullen and stagnant waters close in not around death alone 
— the death of the higher sensibilities and affections — but 
around the life, the monstrous and abounding life of the 
sensual appetites. Idiotic apathy may coexist with the 
most appaling sensualism, and the bestial instincts of glut- 
tony and lust may run riot in their dark caves, while the 
lordly towers above are wrecked or scaled, and the daugh- 
ters of music and vision are shut out or driven away. We 



260 AMERICAN LIFE. 

see cases of such stolidity and sensualism wherever the 
higher sensibilities are neglected, and the vital point settles 
down into besotted earthiness. Our own danger, however, 
probably lies in the opposite direction, and our senses suffer 
from being drawn away from their natural and healthful 
objects, and being exposed to all kinds of morbid stimulus. 
After we have been a month in the country, it is a trial of 
our nerves to pass a day in the city. The tumult and hurry 
and noise of Broadway almost distract us ; the very air 
surges like an angry sea on which proud ships ride forth to 
conquest, and wrecked crews are always hoisting the flag 
of distress or firing their minute guns. We feel an electric 
thrill in the very presence of the great multitude by day 
and even by night, and we almost sleep upon our arms, 
half conscious that life is a constant campaign, and every 
hour an alarm-bell may ring. True, indeed, we become in 
time used to all this excitement, and like it, and even add 
to it; but this fact is no proof that it is good for us. 
The drunkard loves his cup, and we love ours — our habi- 
tual excitement — too, the most fondly the very moment 
that we are nearest ruin. 

This fast life surely is not good for us. It may be, and 
undoubtedly is, better than swinish apathy, but it is not 
healthy. Our men do not live long in cities, and threescore 
and ten years is becoming a very exceptional age among 
our elderly people. Many who hold on to life pretty stoutly 
are yet very shaky, and seem to keep alive like patients 
whose soul and body are held together by spirits and 
anodynes. Many an elderly man, who aught to be in the full 



AMERICAN NERVES. 



261 



exercise of his judgment and the calm enjoyment of his 
affections, is slowly wasting in a fever that is fed in the 
morning by greedy money-getting, and in the evening by 
free potations. Between the counter and the decanter a 
great multitude are digging unconsciously their graves, and 
from time to time they fall into the open pit without giving 
or taking a word or sign of warning. The physician may 
note their symptoms, and read in the trembling hand or 
tongue the disorder of the nervous system and the perils 
to life or sanity, but even if he ventures upon timely hints, 
they may lead to some slight precautions — a little riding, 
a few weeks' diet, a journey to the Springs, a voyage to 
Europe — but seldom to any radical change in the whole 

method of living. 

It is not merely the physical senses, of course, but the 
whole range of sensibilities, social, and religious, that need 
the attraction of their appropriate objects, and are deranged 
by the lack or the abuse of them. Our whole social na- 
ture is now eminently sensitive, and besides those several 
instincts that determine specific social relations, as in the 
family, there is a great social sensibility, a dominant sym- 
pathy of race, that craves human fellowship, and can not 
live alone. This exists wherever man is found, but is pecu- 
liarly intensified by our modern civilization. The ancients 
felt deeply the great loyalties and affinities of family, coun- 
try, and, in a measure, of religion; but they knew no such 
power of public opinion as now sways the world, and de- 
crees the cut of a coat, the trimming of a bonnet, the turn 
of a treaty, the fame of an author or the fashion of a reli- 



262 AMERICAN LIFE. 

gion. We live not only upon the air of heaven, but upon 
the breath of opinion ; and in our cities, life, in a great 
measure, follows this mysterious and almost inexorable 
social law. Country people seem to be more independent, 
and almost indifferent ; but they too are often given to the 
reigning idols, and in the farm-house city ways and think- 
ing win great attention and force the moment the sons and 
daughters are in question, and the future of the family is to 
be decided. 

We do not say that moderate sensitiveness to social 
opinion is in itself an evil but quite the contrary, for utter 
indifference is far more likley to lead to apathy or eccentri- 
city than to manly independence ; and we hardly know of 
a recluse or an odditiy who would not be vastly humanized 
by a tolerable leaven of sympathy and companionableness. 
Yet it is clear that immense danger wait upon this instinct, 
and far more of our people languish and die of mortification 
and fancied neglect than of starvation or want. We are 
well aware, indeed, that a certain amount of difference and 
competition is necessary to give a healthful stir and pleasant 
zest to society ; and that where all the elements are wholly 
monotonous, stagnation and disease inevitably ensue. In 
the general relations of society, as well as in marriage, 
a certain diversity of blood and experience is necessary to 
health and sanity ; and as those families and districts that 
constantly intermarry with each other tend to degenerate, 
so it is, in a great measure, with the households and cliques 
that associate only with each other until they are so assimi- 
lated that wholesome variety can not exist, and they settle 



AMERICAN NERVES. 263 

down into a dull routine that is more like dead mechanism 
than living harmony. We believe that serious mental dis- 
eases sometimes result from this monotony of households 
and neighborhoods, and many a moping woman or hypo- 
chondriac man would be made a new creature, not by a 
brief change of air and locality, but by a permanent change 
of the whole plan of living, through more genial associa- 
tions and varied pursuits and recreation. In all monoto- 
nous homes and haunts, as in all stagnant waters and marshes, 
deadly miasmata lurk ; and nothing is more frequent, among 
persons who are compelled to be constantly together with- 
out due change, than the alternation of gloom and irrita- 
bility — fits of sullen silence broken by flashes of petulant 
temper, like forked lightning from the dark and heavy 
• cloud. Such association, or rather conglomeration, is like 
the earth without the sun to cheer, and vary and transform 
its elements and existences by solar gravity, light, heat and 
electricity. The soul, quite as much as the soil, needs the 
solar influence, and a wise economy of life will copy the 
arts of good husbandry in its use of the blessed sunshine. 
We must remember, however, that there is moderation in 
all things, and even the sunshine may scorch our gardens, 
and blind our eyes, and dry our springs. Happy is he who 
can feel the wholesome attraction of all social forces, and 
yet keep his mind lightly poised upon its own centre, and 
true to its own orbit. 

Terrible evils come from giving solar centrality and 
attraction to some equivocal if not evil power, such as often 
goes by the nflme of fashion or the world. In one way or 



264 AMERICAN LIFE. 

another we are all more or less subject to this sway, and 
our spirits rise or fall, are gloomy or giddy as our great ar- 
biter smiles or frowns upon us. Much even of our hard 
work and anxious scheming looks for its reward to this 
pitiful demi-god ; and success in business or a profession 
has its choicest reward in the eyes of wordlings from the 
breath of social opinion, and but for the spur of emulation, 
the sting of rivalry, many an eager competitor would rest 
upon his laurels or his gains, and save something of himself 
both body and soul, from the wasting fever that is burning 
him up. To all of us there is some social power that tends 
to be our central sun, and be the solar arbiter of our desti- 
ny ; and evidently our modern manners that so discourage 
the old-fashioned rural independence and muscular hardi- 
hood, and herd such multitudes together in cities with so 
many and so incessant excitements from financial and social 
competition, heating atmospheres, enervating amusements, 
enfeebling and inebriating habits at table, stimulating 
books and arts, tend very much to intensify our social sen- 
sibilities and throw us into the arms of the world in which 
we move. That world, indeed, may take many shaj^es, 
whether of business, politics, pleasure, vice, literature, or 
religion, and we must allow that a great city presents some 
forms of social attraction that are solar in intrinsic worth 
as in actual importance. Probably the best society in the 
city if well understood would help its clients forward in 
true life, and the thorough gentleman or lady has not only 
the charm of refined manners, but the grace of gentle 
breeding and high principle. Yet every whSre a yielding, 



AMERICAN NERVES. 265 

dependent nature is in danger of some malign fascination, and 
we all need to say our prayers whether strong men or sensi- 
tive women, that alike in body and soul, in nerve and spirit, 
we may be saved from this tyrant world that insists on being 
our idol, the central sun of our worship and our life. 

Our sons and our daughters feel the attraction, and be- 
fore we can say definitely what the matter is with them, 
we know that something is the matter, and a power is at 
work upon them, and not mainly for good, not mainly ac- 
cording to the lessons of the home, the school, and the 
church. Our daughters, as being the most sensitive, may 
sooner indicate the tendency of their dispositions, and in- 
terpret to us the code of the social arbiter that claims 
homage. We see something of the world within the 
world, that so mightily presses its decrees and plies the 
overtasked nerves and spirit with its incessent appeals and 
stimulants, that ransack all nature and art for materials and 
methods, and touch every sensibility of our being, from the 
senses and passions to the taste and imagination, and make 
it the part of prudence to play upon every responsive 
string of this magnificent but not over-strong organism 
with which the Creator has endowed us. This new sun 
worship, this new honor of Baal and Astarte, has its reti- 
nue of priests, its splendid ritual, and its orders of teach- 
ers and artists. Wonderful is the paraphernalia # of pomp 
and luxury that waits upon its will, and perhaps the most 
voluminous portion of modem literature, the novels and 
romances of society, is devoted to its service, and does its 
best to turn the heads of our young people "with morbid 

L 



266 AMERICAN LIFE. 

love dreams and fortune hunting. Apparently a large part 
of the place that was once filled by books of devotion is 
now held by romances and stories of the world and the 
heart, or what goes by that name. The old confessional is 
not so much abandoned as transformed, and the circulating 
library puts questions and hears secrets such as were sel- 
dom on the lips or in the ears of ghostly priests. 

What is coming of all this new ministry to the sensibili- 
ties which now begins with little readers in bibs and 
tuckers, and is continued sometimes by mothers and grand- 
mothers in caps and spectacles, we can not say, for we have 
not seen the end of it, and it takes at least a full human 
lifetime, threescore and ten years, perhaps more, % to show 
the entire run of a social usage, especially of a mental epi- 
demic. It is very certain, however, that there is a great 
deal of morbid sensibility both of body and mind that 
comes of this excess of sentimental and passional stimulus 
with the attendant diminution of the old-fashioned outdoor 
exercise, household thrift, and muscular activity. What- 
ever be our solar attraction, whether the world of romance 
or the world of current society, it is a very ficklejind shaky 
luminary, and sad are they who make it their light and 
guide. In some resj^ects the old regime of the Court and 
the Church were better, for they were more steadfast, and 
the solar quality of stability is an offset to many of the 
limitations and rudenesses of the ancient times. 

Even our religious world has not the solar stability that 
should belong to it, and we believe that a considerable share 
of the mental unsoundness of our time comes from want of 



AMERICAN NERVES. 267 

a fixed foundation of faith, and regular nurture of the 
higher affections. Not many people run mad from fanati- 
cism now, and the authentic reports are ample proof that 
a very small percentage of the insane become such from 
fear of having committed the unpardonable sin, and lost 
the hope of salvation. But we look for the fruits of re- 
ligious unsoundness to the too general fever and instability 
of the people, and regard all ill-temper, gloom, and discon- 
tent, all apathy and excess, as more or less connected with 
a fundamental defect in religious training. Almost all the 
mischiefs of an ill-built house may rise foom a bad founda- 
tion, and they who build on the sand must expect all 
discomforts and perils in the superstructure, no matter how 
fine the material and careful the work. Now we certainly fail 
of the true stability in religion in these days of universal 
questioning and agitation. Even good religious people 
carry their religion too much in the upper story, and too 
little in the affections and habits that are the basis of life. 
They are reasoning, talking, bookish believers, and they are 
satisfied with a fine theory of light and warmth divine, in- 
stead of going directly to the fountain-head in an affection- 
ate, genial, practical, orderly church and home life. We 
are not pleading for the restoration of the old fixtures, and 
for anathematizing modern thought, or calling all doubt the 
child of the devil. But sure we are that if our reasonable 
scruples could be more satisfactorily met, and our tastes and 
dispositions could be duly considered, and the ministry of 
religion could be brought to bear upon us with something 
of the ancient stability, order, solemnity, and variety, our 



268 AMERICAN LIFE. 

age would be greatly a gainer, and health and spirits would 
be vastly nearer the true mark. As things are, religion too 
often frets and fevers us. It is too critical and subjective, 
calling us to spin faith out of our brains, and grow grace 
from our own emotions, instead of finding all that we want 
in Him who asks to be the all in all to us, and in whom we 
are to live, and move, and have our being, as does our old 
mother earth in the sunshine. Every age has its form of 
morbid religious sensibility ; and we suffer in our way, not 
so much, we think, from any prevailing fanaticism or su- 
perstition as from a general mobility, a critical unrest, and 
an introversial uneasiness. All self-consciousness is more 
or less morbid ; and whether we fix attention on our stomach 
or our conscience, our heart or our affections, an unhealthy 
current sets toward that quarter, and we are not well until 
we forget ourselves and our organs and frailties in the ser- 
vice of God and his people. 

II. Thug*we come to the active part of our nature — to 
the will, the centrifugal force that checks and counteracts 
the excessive and morbid play of the sensibilities. Here 
we are still subject to danger; and the active impulses, as 
well as the more passive senses and affections, are liable to 
great derangement. Very likely the barbarous races, that 
seem to have been so free from our ailments, had peculiar 
infirmities ; and those savage warriors, instead of sighing 
like our sentimental swains over imaginary troubles, and 
pining for coy beauties until they lose their wits, if they 
ever had any to lose, lived a life of continual madness, and 
their war fever was a bloody mania that haunted them like 



AMERICAN NERVES. 269 

a remorseless fiend. Barbaric times are full of the traces 
of fearful cruelties and demoniacal possessions, which per- 
petuate themselves even in the temples and rites of relig- 
ion. The martial spirit itself mated with two evil spirits, 
widely contrasted, and found distraction now in monstrous 
fanaticism, and now in the grossest sensual indulgence. If 
we suffer most from unstrung nerves and sensibilities, they 
suffered most from unsubdued impulses ; and if folly is our 
besetting ailment, madness was theirs. In fact every active 
power may be beside itself by overexcitement, and even 
the simple instinct of muscular motion may be crazed 
either by long suppressed exercise or overexcitement 
and the arms, legs, and features may make chaos come 
again by their wild and discordant play. 

All the social impulses are exposed to similar disorder, 
and what are called irritable tempers are such often from 
the suppression of healthy social impulses. Let any of us 
keep in the house a day or two without active exercise, and 
how our muscles rebel against the prison walls, and are 
craving to upset every thing in their way, and to seize hold 
of every stick Or toy that can be made to call into play the 
suppressed energies. On the same principle, let the active 
spirits be kept down, and what mischief comes ! How 
cross is the child that is not allowed to play, and how 
madly the little creature rushes at the first opportunity, and 
seizes hold of the first available playmate as an oasis in a 
desert, or a loaf of bread in a famine ! We grown chil- 
dren are quite as impatient of restraint, and we fret and 



270 AMERICAN LIFE. 

fume like madmen if we are cut short of our accustomed 
activity. What a wild beast an active man generally is when 
kept away from his usual pursuits, and in the fullness of health! 
He can not keep still, and his muscles and impulses are as 
ravenous for exercise as the stomach after fasting is raven- 
ous for food. In fact the human will has its own appetite 
as much as the senses, and hungers and thirsts after its 
appropriate objects ; nay, it pines and starves without its 
proper aliment, and starvation of the will is one of the fre- 
quent forms of mental disease. This truth is very obvious 
whenever men suddenly renounce their active j^ursuits, and 
lead a life of comparative seclusion, as in case of the sailor 
who goes to live upon a farm, or the merchant who gives 
up business for unbroken leisure. Immediate discomforts, 
and generally in the end alarming maladies, follow. The 
impulses and the will, bereft of their accustomed play and 
nurture, clamor for their objects; and when disappointed 
turn upon their masters, and tear them, as the old demo- 
niacs of Gadara were torn by the fiends that possessed 
them. Something like delirium tremens ensues, and all the 
active powers, like the fearful appetite for stimulants, have 
their form of delirium when their indulgences are cut off; 
and even common business becomes as necessary to its vo- 
tary as liquor is necessary to its victim; and the hypochon- 
dria of the retired merchant is very much, in nature, though 
not in degree, like the madness of the restrained inebriate. 
The inference from this principle of our constitution evi- 
dently is, that every active power or impulse should move 



AMERICAN NERVES. 271 

iii its prefer orbit, alike for the sake of its own healthy 
development and as a check upon the excessive sensibility 
to which it is so nearly allied. Instead of quarreling with 
the more tremulous and morbid forms of sensitiveness, we 
are to study them carefully and tenderly, and consider 
what capacities they denote and what activities they de- 
mand. It is the part of wisdom not only to satisfy and 
soothe them with their appropriate objects, as by bestowing 
kindness upon the gentle, comfort to the lowly, encourage- 
ment to the desponding ; but also to set them to work in 
such way as to stir nervous delicacy to healthy effort, 
and remove nervous tremor by muscular training. It is 
a new study to some of us — this study of morbid 
sensibilities with an eye to corresponding healthy activity. 
Yet how rich in lessons in this science is our common life 
and how vast the field is for the application of the true 
science or art of checks and balances ! Take, for example, 
the nervous delicacy and morbid sentimentalism so com- 
mon among girls of a certain age. We do not make light 
of it, nor slight the gentle manners and methods of sooth- 
ing a sensitive temperament, nor the bracing discipline that 
brings muscular hardihood to the relief of overwrought 
nerves. Yet God's method surpasses ours by calling all 
those trembling sensibilities, both of mind and body, into 
the active voice, and woman is a new creature when her 
affections go forth on their providential mission, and as wife 
and mother her love is unwearied labor, and her labor is 
unwearied love. In constitution, temper, mind, and spirit, 
she puts forth new power, and she does not surrender, but 



272 AMERICAN LIFE. 

transposes, the delicacy of her nature in this benign school 
of her Creator, as the magnet does not lose but quickens 
and steadies its trembling life by pointing strongly and 
loyally to its polar star. 

It is well to question every sensitive capacity in the 
light of this same large philosophy, to discover its whole- 
some, active sphere. We are not for making fun even of 
the vanities that are so tremulously alive to social favor; 
and we have long been convinced that many of the most 
gentle and valuable characters that are capable of feeling 
the best moral and intellectual influences and following the 
noblest leaders, are those that are in danger of being 
laughed out of countenance, if not trodden under foot. 
The vines are as important as the oaks, and bear richer 
juices and have more flexible and perhaps as strong fibres. 
Let the vines be taken care of, and beautify the oaks by 
their clusters and their climbing. All this excessive sus- 
ceptibility in modern society, in many men and in most 
women, should lead us to look for some appropriate ca- 
reer, such as shall not shock delicate tastes, and shall 
carry out fine dispositions to fitting objects. The heart 
must have its own missiou to fulfill, and the arts of charity 
as well as beauty must open paths for its activity, give 
music to its marches, and lend glow to its pulses. A be- 
ginning has been already made, and whatever is best in 
onr modern humanity and culture proves that mercy is 
twice blessed, and they who heal others are themselves 
healed, as the spring that healed the sick was itself healed 
by the visits of the troubling angel. 



AMERICAN NERVES. 273 

All true art we regard as eminently sanative, because it 
calls out the active powers in fellowship with beautiful 
tastes and delicate affections. Even rude manual labor 
has a share in this healing ministry, for it braces the 
nerves, and strengthens the limbs, and gives point to 
the hours, and works off the moody humors that else 
might be morbid and dangerous. We tremble to think 
of what the gathering animal spirits of fifty thousand 
workmen in a great city might do, if this enormous 
electric battery were not every day and every hour dis- 
charging itself upon some stubborn and insensible ma- 
terial of wood, stone, leather, cloth, iron, or the solid earth. 
The daintier 'classes have the same needs to meet in their 
way, and all the arts of business, culture, accomplishment, 
humanity, and religion, are needed to keep them with 
sound mind in sound body. We believe that the progress 
of the beautiful arts in the higher classes has been very 
conducive to their health ; and even music, which is usu- 
ally ranked among the soft and enfeebling arts, has done 
much to train the will as well as to quicken the senses ; and 
an expert pianist or vocalist must take a vast amount of 
physical and mental" exercise to keep in tolerable practice. 
Is there not a compensation in this for the perils of our new 
social refinement, and are not the daughters, and in a meas- 
ure the sons, of the affluent to open new paths of culture 
and distinction, that, shall feed the sensibilities, and train 
the powers, and elevate the position, without interfering 
with the usual market of labor, or robbing the poor of their 
bread ? Let all the beautiful arts then live ; and it is no 

L2 



274 AMERICAN LIFE. 

small comfort to know that the benign muses that solace 
weary hours and give zest to lives not subject to the spur of 
want or the strain of oppression, may be a precious stay in 
times of trial or adversity, like the bright blooms of sum- 
mer gardens that may be the sweet and healing balms of 
the dark and cold winter days. 

The highest and fairest of all arts is that which devotes 
the life to God, and trains the will to its highest office of love 
and duty to that Supreme Will which is the end of our 
being, the infinite object and blessedness. We will not 
presume to limit the forms or varieties of this art. We are 
willing, nay, glad to have all earnest people follow it in 
their own way, and we confess that we are ourselves trying 
to take lessons in it every day of our lives from some of 
the many proficients in this benign art, and our" list of 
adepts and exemplars follows no party lines, but rejoices 
in a wide fellowship of loyal sons and daughters of God ; 
comprising, in friendly closeness, names most diverse, from 
the obedient Catholic to the independent Quaker, and run- 
ning through the whole intermediate scale. To us he is mas- 
ter of the art of arts and of the noblest of sanative 
schools who can so lift his own will to God in piety 
and charity as to bring other souls within the saving 
attraction, and join them thus vitally to the only true 
church, the blessed company of the children of God. 
This art is not yet exhausted, and it has finer issues 
and deeper treasures to open than any that physical sci- 
ence can open ; anodynes beyond the power of narcotics 
or anesthetics, tonics beyond the range of drugs and 



AMERICAN NERVES. 275 

electricity. He alone is by eminence the Good Physi- 
cian who came to heal souls by teaching and moving 
them to love and do the will of our Father in heaven, 
in sympathy with his children. 

III. We have given these hints upon the discipline ol 
the two spheres of human life, the more passive sensibilities 
and the more active energies, and shown in passing how 
the two counterbalance and check each other in a whole- 
some method like the forces that draw the planets to the sun, 
and send them off also by centrifugal weight, and so keep 
the harmony of the spheres. It is obvious that a judicious 
method will accept this principle, and so rule life as to give 
each side of our being its rights, and combine the passive and 
the active elements in due association and succession. 
Here the Creator is our teacher, and we are wise as we 
copy the order of nature in the method of life. Thus con- 
sider the interchange of day and night — the one for action, 
the other for rest ; the one more in the tone of striving will, 
the other more in the tone of the genial affections, tranquil 
meditation, as well as of physical repose. What a disaster 
it would be were either day or night to be perpetual, and we 
were compelled to lose the benign alternation or to imitate 
it by our poor arts ; to illuminate night into the look of day, or 
to darken the glaring and perpetual day into the semblance 
of night ! The result would be not only inconvenience and 
discomfort, but disease both of mind and body. Let us 
read then, the majestic lesson, and allow our life to have 
its day side and its night side, as also its intermediate twi- 
light, by wisely uniting active labor with tranquil rest, and 



276 AMERICAN LIFE. 

interposing the twilight of genial recreation and soothing 
conversation between the two. 

The Creator is teaching us the art of mental health, too, 
in the round of the seasons. The year, like the day, needs 
its variety, and suffering and disorder ensue whenever we 
do not yield to the influence, or we allow care or pleasure 
to set aside the benign ministry of the changing months, 
which are as essential to our human life as to the uses of 
the soil and the trees. Health and spirits alike feel the 
variation in this grand ritual of creation; and the old 
church did but copy the work of God in the varied or- 
der of its year, and base the priest's breviary upon the 
pages of the almanac of nature. In the ancient times 
great good was done to the people undoubtedly by the 
rich variety and benign alternations of the church year 
which copied inversely the order of the seasons, and made 
the long and dreary winter of nature the blooming and 
varied summer of the Church, in a round of feasts and fasts 
without ceasing from Advent to Pentecost. There is still 
much power in this ancient method, although it is too 
pedantic and antiquated, too much bound down by obsolete 
ideas and usages, and too little adapted to the thinking 
and action of our age. Without picking a quarrel with 
any of our neighbors of the old regime, we do not hesitate 
to say that we believe in a more reasonable and generous 
order of the year than has hitherto prevailed in the old 
church Catholic or the new church Protestant — a method 
that shall develop our present convictions into practice as the 
ancient church developed the convictions of its own leaders 



AMERICAN NERVES. 277 

from the fourth century to the fourteenth. We do not be- 
lieve indeed in forcing the matter, and we know very well 
that the best things grow, and are not manufactured ; that 
life is born, not made. 

We should like, however, to have our wisest heads try 
their hand at planning or maturing the true order of the year 
for humanity and religion. As matters now are, money is 
the ruling power, and capital, taking advantage of the in- 
difference of the masses to the old religion, is gradually and 
perhaps unconsciously shaping society to its own policy, 
and dividing the year, month, and day so as to make the most 
profit out of the method. We do not denounce capital or 
capitalists, yet we believe this age of gold lacks some ele- 
ments that redeemed the old ages of faith ; and we are not 
altogether pleased at seeing banks, work-shops, stores, and 
factories lord it over life in place of the old priories, colleges, 
and churches, and at having the year of merchandise and 
manufacture supplant the year of religion. We are not, 
however, for going back but forward. Suppose then, dear 
reader, we startle you with a closing hint, and suggest call- 
ing a grand council of health to tell us how to use better 
the time that life is made of, and divide the months and 
days so as best to copy Heaven's merciful law. We are 
willing to be very liberal, and let every true thought and 
generous interest be represented. 

We will give the body a fair voice in the council, and not 
only shall the doctors of medicine send their best men but 
the roughs shall not be crowded out ;. and the German 
Turners and the English Cricketers shall have their say for 



278 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the arts that are manly, and the sports that are genial and 
strengthening. All trades and professions shall state their 
grievances and wants, and suggest their remedy for monotony 
or overwork. Woman shall be justly and generously heard, 
especially her plea for more joy and nobleness in her social 
life, and such order of church and home as to bring higher 
motives and associations to bear upon her daily lot. Chil- 
dren shall not be shut out, and bright girls and boys from 
our schools and play-grounds shall be heard, especially in 
their protest against the utilitarianism that makes religion 
of politics and trade, and installs dogmatics and metaphys- 
ics at the altar in place of the living God and the loving 
humanity. The artists should have their place, and plead 
at will for the worth of their vocations, and the importance 
of bringing music, poetry, the drama, architecture, sculp- 
ture, painting, eloquence, to bear habitually upon the com- 
mon life, and enlist and convert the old muses to the new 
catholicity of the children of God. The clergy we would 
deal with most liberally, and seek the most earnest and 
judicious of them all from mitred Archbishops to radical 
Puritans, from Cardinal Wiseman to Henry Ward Beecher, 
bidding them, in the name of religion, devise some method 
by which worship may resume its place in the affections of 
mankind, and the year as it rolls may bear all its interests 
and blessing to the mercy-seat, and call all men to find in 
God the all in all. As things now tend religion is making 
more and more of its old heritage over to the world, and los- 
ing its hold over the masses that were once its strength with- 
out succeeding in gaining any proportionate power over the 



AMERICAN NERVES. 279 

wealth and culture which are its pride and ornament. The 
general health both in body and mind suffers from the want 
of some dominant wisdom that ascends to universal princi- 
ples, and rules life under its solar influences, in the sensibil- 
ity and intelligence, the earnestness and strength that are 
Heaven's own law, and can alone bring Heaven's kingdom 
to our earth. 

The great consummation, however, is coming, and in 
various quarters the thinkers and actors are moving to their 
aim. We believe all the more in their success, because we 
believe that they have a leader not of their own appointing, 
even Him who made the world and marshaled the hosts of 
heaven. Every hour of idle star-gazing is a comfort to us, 
therefore, trying as this last hour of star-gazing may have 
been to the patience of our readers in suggesting this hum- 
ble essay. 



XII. 

The Ethics of Love. 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 283 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 

T7IVERY BODY will allow that it is well to talk of the 
^ Romance of Love, the Sentiment, the Poetry, the En- 
thusiasm, or even of the Tragedy of Love; but who ever 
heard of such a matter as is implied in the words, " The 
Ethics of Love ? " Yet there they stand, good reader, and 
there they will stand until you see and like their meaning. 
No thought is more vital to our own well-being and to the 
very salvation of society than that which they indicate. 
The world will continue to be a sink of iniquity until wis- 
dom and virtue rule the springs of feeling and action, and 
the relation which is first of all others as cause and conse- 
quence is regarded in its just dignity, and comes within 
the jurisdiction of morals and religion. 

I know very well what the whole host of Sentimentalists 
will say, whatever may be their differences of temperament 
or character, whether moonlight dreamers or wide-awake 
enthusiasts. " What would you make of this life of ours, 
thus to rob it of its enchantment, and put prudence in the 
place of passion, enslave emotion to duty, and insist on 
boring us to death with your moral lectures, instead of 



284 AMERICAN LIFE. 

leaving the heart to the freedom and sacredness of its 
own inspirations ? "We believe in being good and doing 
good as much as you do, but there is a time for all things ; 
and we insist that the affections are their own highest law, 
and you take the very life out of them the moment you 
begin to prate of authority above them. Let us alone, and 
you will find that all will come out right at last, and Nature 
takes good care of her own children who follow her impe- 
rious law." We have heard a good deal of such stuff as 
this, and have lived long enough to see its utter folly and 
its wretched fruits. 

I confess, indeed, to having attained somewhat grave 
years and long since to have passed the heyday of young 
romance. Yet I would not write to disparage youthful 
enthusiasm, but rather to honor and pepetuate it. Those 
of us who have passed the meridian, and kept constant 
company with our own children and their young friends, 
think as much of the heart as we ever did, and probably 
more. In the best sense of the word we are willing to be 
thought younger than ever — as ready surely as ever to 
enter into the glee of childhood, to play and prattle with 
merry girls and boys, to go among the wedding guests 
without carrying a funeral visage thither, and to take our 
share of the wedding cup and the bridal kiss. It is pre- 
cisely because we believe in the heart that we are to see 
and vindicate its sacred law, and show forth the solemn 
fact that it denies itself, and strikes at the seat of its own 
best life, the very moment it rejects authority, and sets up 
its own sentiments and impulses as the supreme standard. 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 285 

The best natures apparently feel this truth before they have 
philosophized upon its principles and sources ; and when- 
ever they are moved by an engrossing affection, they 
almost instinctively seek the protection and sanction of 
the highest law, the Supreme truth and love. It would be 
a paradox were it not sober reality, that the deepest of 
passions rises gladly into the highest of loyalties ; and not 
prudential foresight only, but devoted love, asks that solemn 
vows may be spoken that invoke the majestic rule of God 
over the uncertain sway of human feelings. 

A great deal of mischief is done, and in high life as well 
as low life, by ignoring this fact, and taking it for granted 
that love is to be regarded wholly as a private experience 
and that the world and the church, and perhaps even pa- 
rents and friends, have nothing to do with it, or at least have 
no right to interfere with it. We are not speaking now of 
persons^ so utterly unprincipled as to set human laws at de- 
fiance and offend the first principles of social decency. Yet of 
those who conform to public opinion — at least to its external 
laws — not a few hold very false views upon the subject, and 
miserably mistake the essential truths of social and reli- 
gious order. Misery beyond account comes from making 
a god of a very equivocal impulse, and holding every rela- 
tion and duty second to its movings. Thus a girl of fair 
character and education sometimes imbibes from trashy 
novels, or as trashy associates, the preposterous notion that 
the first man who wins her fancy and haunts her dreams is 
her predestined husband ; and that if thoughtful parents, 
who have watched over her for years, present objections or 



286 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ask any hard questions, it is perfectly justifiable for her to 
turn her back upon them and the old homestead, and run 
away with her lover, who may be a knave or a fool, or may 
possibly settle down into a decent and commonplace man, 
with nothing of the hero except what he had in the imagi- 
nation of bis silly bride. Sometimes worse results follow, 
and the deification of passion brings forth its bitter fruits 
of shame. 

Allow that love is an emotion, and one quite private and 
personal, and in itself alone concerned only with two par- 
ties, the lover and the loved. Are not all the feelings in 
themselves private and individual, and do we not cease to be 
rational and moral beings the moment we rest in mere 
emotions, and fail to rise into the region of thought, where 
universal ideas dwell and universal ties are recognized? 
What would be the consequence of treating other impulses 
as romancers and sentimentalists treat love ? Suppose that 
our sons and daughters should swear eternal friendship to 
every acquaintance who happened to take their fancy, and 
form fixed associations with them, instead of waiting for 
time and reflection to pass judgment upon the fitness of 
such an intimacy ? Certain mischief, and often utter ruin 
would follow ; and our sons surely are likely to find in some 
of the school and college friends who most fascinate them 
at first the most dangerous temptations and vices. If it 
will not do to base relations of friendship upon impulse or 
passion, why rest the relations of love upon such a sandy 
foundation ? These relations, from their very nature, need 
more caution, as the consequences of error are more endur- 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 287 

ing and fatal, and lovers, husbands, or wives can not be 
thrown off or set aside like false friends. 

Instead of according to the impulsive or passional school 
of love the supreme honor, on account of its fervor and its 
unselfish devotion, we rate it very low, and deny to it the 
true human worth. Impulse, mere passion, is in a low 
plane, the plane of mere nature, and allies us with the ani- 
mals, and with the idiots or naturals to whom irrational 
desire is the imperative law. Animal impulse runs its own 
course without being troubled by any thought of what rea- 
son and conscience dictate, or social and religious order 
demand. The idiot, as the word denotes, follows merely 
his private or individual desire, as if he were his own man, 
instead of belonging to duty, society, and to God. He eats, 
drinks, sleeps, vegetates, and animalizes himself as the 
mood takes him. He beeomes truly human only when he 
rises from impulse to reason, and learns to connect his indi- 
vidual feelings and desires with the laws of society and 
religion, so that he becomes a social being, integrated or 
made whole by living in the family the nation and the 
church. He does not escape his idiotic condition by carry- 
ing his impulses merely into a higher plane, and exchanging 
animal passion for impulsive sentiment, however refined or 
mystical. He is not a rational and moral creature, a true 
man, until he completes himself by ruling his impulses and 
p'assions in reason and conscience, and living not for him- 
self alone, but for his neighbor, humanity, and God. He 
is essentially idiotic so long as he cuts himself off from the 
higher fellowship of his race, whether he grovels like a 



288 AMERICAN LIFE. 

brute in the sty, or dreams himself into a phantom in the 
cloister, or heats himself into a furnace in his chamber. No 
matter what the impulse may be, whether it is horror of 
water, or longing to jump into the river, to eat dirt, or to 
drink poison, or to run crazy with love, so long as the im- 
pulse of itself rules him, he is not a whole man, not truly 
human. 

We do not quarrel with impulse as such, but we deny it 
the supreme honor, and allow it no worth apart from the 
rule of reason and conscience. These benign and majestic 
guides do not crush the impulses, but accept, purify, and 
guide them ; so that a rational and just man, instead of 
being a calculating machine, is the most affectionate, genial, 
and earnest of beings, holding all his senses and susceptibil- 
ities open to the best influences and under the best control. 
He does not deny the emotional or mystical element, either 
in love or religion, any more than he denies that element 
in the charm of eloquence or music. He does not shut out 
the mystery of art or nature, or of social fascination, but 
accepts it in a more open eye or ear and well- trained mind 
and temper. He does not pretend to explain the myste- 
rious power of a landscape, or symphony, or beautiful face 
and form, but is able and willing to appreciate it truly with- 
out mistake or hallucination. In fact reason and conscience 
are the conditions of the purest and highest mysticism, for 
they make a man alive to what is loveliest and best in 
nature, art, and religion, and enable him to hear the blessed 
word and see the blessed vision that are hidden from the 
vulgar sense. We will not say that a man must be a poet, 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 289 

saint, or philosopher to be in love ; bnt sure it is that the 
highest qualities, instead of preventing, deepen the expe- 
rience ; and he who is the mosMff a man can most appreci- 
ate the best gifts of God, human and divine, and of course 
therefore can best appreciate that good gift of God, that gift 
both human and divine, true womanhood. A great deal 
of nonsense has been said and sung and written upon this 
subject; but the nonsense does not lie in the mere fact of 
mystical emotion ; and all thoughtful people are ready to 
own that in love and religion true experience passes under- 
standing, and does not come of calculation, but of the 
spirit that moves as it lists. The spirit, however, moves 
each soul accoding to its affinities and aptitudes, and a man 
of sense and principle, whether before bright eyes in 
social fellowship or under ghostlier influence in the sanctu- 
ary, discriminates between truth and falsehood, and is not 
likely to be bewitched by a fool or harlot, or converted 
by a knave or an ass. True susceptibility is not insan- 
ity ; and while it is open to whatever is true and lovely, it 
opens the gates of reason, conscience, and affection, not the 
doors of Bedlam, with its madness and folly. "Why is 
it," said a fine young man, who had wooed and won a 
noble girl not long ago — " why is it that love is so much 
like religion, and that it comes upon a man very much like 
the new birth that the Gospel speaks of, and does not seem 
to be our own work ? " The reply of a Broad Church min- 
ister was somewhat thus : " For the best of all reasons 
my dear fellow : it is because they are very much the same 
thing in different planes ; it is love in the divine sphere that 

M 



290 AMERICAN LIFE. 

makes religion, and love in the human sphere that makes 
what is truly worthy the name and calls for marriage as its 
just and sacred consummation." 

Dismissing, therefore, the preposterous notion that im- 
pulse or passion of itself is love, and maintaining that 
this experience, instead of being shut out of the higher 
relations of reason, conscience, and religion, comes within 
them all, and needs their guidance and comfort in full 
communion, we are ready to. take more positive ground, 
and perhaps astonish the most romantic as well as the 
most utilitarian of our readers with our extravagance. 
Do not be alarmed as to our sanity when we deliber- 
ately affirm that true love is a virtue, and high among 
the list of virtues when true to its highest standard. 
How can we stop short of this position without throwing 
the most vital of earthly relations wholly out of the court 
of conscience and the shrine of religion ? ' If we merely say 
that true love is innocent, or does no wrong, we still deny 
its moral character ; for so are the mountains and -trees, the 
doves and the lambs innocent, yet they have no soul, and 
aspire to no virtue. We are not, indeed, turning ascetic, 
and bent on carrying the monkish spirit into the marriage 
market, or affirming that a man loves worthily only when 
he sacrifices his tastes and feelings to the stern law of duty. 
We are not in favor of his marrying his grandmother, or 
any woman of her venerable years and mien, under the 
stolen name of duty; nor do we think that loveliness, 
either of person or disposition, is to be put under the ban 
of church or conscience. But leave the heart free to its 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 291 

own sacred affinities and its true choice, and persistent 
fidelity can not stop short of virtue. 

All virtue, according to our thinking and the best masters 
of ethics and the Word Divine, comes from the Supreme 
Good, and partakes something of its mind and purpose. 
Whatever blessing we have, we have virtuously only when 
we take it from the Supreme Goodness, the All-perfect Giver, 
and make use of it under His providence and grace. Love is 
virtue when it is from God as its source and to Him as its 
object ; and all our affections are virtues as they partake of 
this affection, and proceed from the Eternal Source toward 
the Eternal End, or blessedness. Now what decent man, 
who that is fit to ask any woman to be his wife, can deny 
that he lives under a moral and spiritual kingdom, and that 
the marriage bond has the sanction of God in its beginning, 
and should lead the family nearer to him as its aim ? Every 
true woman understands our position at once, and can not put 
on the wedding-ring without a profound sense of the 
sacredness of the tie as a religious obligation, as well as 
a social compact. The sweetest home virtues nestle within 
that bridal blossom, although often as unconscious of their 
worth and power as the apple-blossoms in spring are uncon- 
scious of the precious hopes they bear to cheer and enrich 
the harvest. 

Love surely should be a virtue by partaking of the su- 
preme good, the infinite wisdom and goodness; and it 
should partake of this both passively and actively, or as a 
motive as well as an affection, and be earnest and strong as 
well as susceptible and judicious. It beeomes all the more 



292 AMERICAN LIFE. 

genial as well as devoted by taking this stand ; and they 
who believe that the Supreme calls them to each other will 
be more open to the highest satisfactions, because they mean 
to be true to the highest duties. They will take more and 
more of what is best, because they are to make the best 
of all things to each other, giving as they receive, and 
receiving that they may give. We do not promise them 
unbroken happiness ; and a marriage that ignores the ne- 
cessity of sacrifice belongs to the Paradise of Fools, and 
treasures up ashes in its mirth. We are told that there are 
seven lamps of architecture that should shine upon every 
master builder's work. He who builds a house or founds a 
home needs them all — the whole seven — the lamps of 
Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, Obedience. 
The lamp of Sacrifice heads the list; and what is the love 
good for that is not lighted by its ray ? Certainly they can 
not love each other who are not willing to make sacrifices 
for each other, and to make them cheerfully, both by suffer- 
ing pain and privation and doing hard service together. 
The good old Prayer-Book makes this idea plain enough, it 
would seem, yet it is too often forgotten in the sweetness of 
the orange-blossoms, the charm of the music, and the rev- 
elry of the marriage-feast. Why forget it, or think it a 
ghost or skeleton that belongs to the grave and not to the 
bridal? There would be more joy, not less, if the solemn 
lesson were made more of, and our young people were 
trained to regard love as having the majesty of sacrifice to 
grace its consecration, and the "promise for richer, for 
poorer, in sickness and in health," were made the meas- 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE- 293 

ure of the affection, and not merely the warning of pru- 
dence or the caution of fear. More marriages would take 
place if this truth were recognized, and the world would 
not as now keep asunder those whom God would unite, by 
interposing its pride and vanity and forbidding the bans 
until it is quite sure that the two will not be obliged to 
make sacrifices for each other, but will be easier and per- 
haps richer by marrying. 

We all know that there are young people enough who 
make fools of themselves by rash marriages ; but their folly 
comes not from expecting sacrifice, but the reverse. They 
marry selfishly, and are disappointed, and often quarrel and 
part, or else live out a miserable existence of repining and 
reproach. If they started with a deep-seated and reason- 
able attachment, taking it for granted that they are to make 
sacrifices for each other, they would be content to begin 
life together in a modest and frugal way, without waiting 
for luxury and without ending in petulance and despair. 
They would marry for love reasonably and conscientiously, 
as they enter into other social, civil, and religious rela- 
tions — not for the sake of amusing themselves, but because 
it is right, and virtue takes precedence of pleasure, and in 
fact commands the only enjoyment that is worthy the name. 
I know well what a revolution this principal would make in 
society ; how many false and ungodly connections it would 
stop, by putting a test that mere wealth and fashion of 
themselves can not abide, and giving a warning that indo- 
lence, thriftlessness, and sentimentalism miserably neglect. 
But there would be more marriages on the whole by far, 



294 AMERICAN LIFE. 

and all of the right-minded sort of young people would be 
ready to marry as soon as they can be congenially mated, and 
begin to live in a comfort that answers the claims of reason 
and the heart, without waiting for luxuries that come only 
with affluence, and depend upon its uncertain stay. We 
should soon see a new style of house-building and furnish- 
ing, of living, dressing, and entertaining, such as moderate 
earnings can provide and modest tastes can enjoy. Thou- 
sands of young women who now " waste their sweetness on 
the desert air," or find gay ball-rooms a desert place to 
them, would find good husbands, and be what God meant 
them to be, sensible and healthy mothers ; and the legion 
of young men who haunt our hotels, clubs, and theatres, or 
worse places, would begin to live the life that is truly 
human. 

The mischief now is that self-indulgence is too much the 
arbiter of marriage, instead of virtue ; and in the scale of 
self-indulgence celibacy seems to win the preference with 
vast numbers, especially of men. No deep vision is needed 
to see what is going on in our towns and cities ; to show 
how temptations and vices abound ; and how little it seems 
to cost to open every pleasure to the reckless and impas- 
sioned. The mischief may begin with one sex, but is not 
confined to one ; and there is nothing in American life 
so alarming as the precocity of those vices among us that 
prevent or destroy the home virtues, and ruin soul and body 
by their abominations. Paris is perhaps bad as it can be, 
so far as the vices of its adult population are concerned ; 
but neither in Paris nor elsewhere in Christendom, have we 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 295 

reason to believe, do the precocious vices of youth, and even 
childhood, so abound as in this empire city of America and 
its great rivals East and West. Here, as nowhere else, are 
the youug left to their own wills and ways. Nor does the 
mischief of measuring the work of love in the scale of low 
gratification bear its fruits only in the nominally degraded 
walks of life. Men of culture and position abound who are 
by no means models of rectitude, and who make their plans 
and habits of living according to principles very different 
from those that are sanctioned by true morality and the 
higher laws of the affections. They shrink from the yoke 
of a loyal union to enter into unhallowed intrigues — blind, 
apparently, to the fact that a certain sacrifice of selfish- 
ness to the welfare of others is the essential mark of noble- 
ness and the condition of the most enduring peace and pros- 
perity. The certainty that loyal love demands sacrifice, 
and calls not only for the frequent surrender of time and 
luxury, but of personal ease and self-will to another's good, 
gives the loyalty its dignity, and in the end secures its hap- 
piness. Nothing is worth having that is not worth sacrifi- 
cing for ; and nothing is held worthily that is not held at 
some cost of means, or time, or thought, or labor. 

Virtue in love is a topic that may make prosy preachers 
draw down the corners of their mouths in sanctimonious 
severity, and may set wide awake, hearty young people into 
a titter, as if an intolerable bore were at hand. The mistake 
lies in regarding such virtue as a poor negation of vice in- 
stead of a generous affirmation of the trite goodness. Very 
little is proved toward a man's virtue when he tells us, 



296 AMERICAN LIFE. 

and tells us truly, what he does not do. Goodness is in 
being and doing something, not in being and doing nothing. 
He is a shabby sort of a temperance man who measures 
his quality by mere abstinence from this or that, and he 
may pinch or dry himself into a mummy or skeleton yet 
never come near that just self-control, or right temper- 
ing of himself against all excess, which constitutes that car- 
dinal virtue temperance. So in the relations of love, absti- 
nence from vice is not virtue, and may be the easier to some 
people because they fall below the true manhood, instead of 
rising above it or even coming up to it. Virtuous love is 
not a pitiful asceticism, but it is human excellence in the 
relations which love originates — in short, it is the pure and 
rational and earnest humanity that should prevail between 
man and woman. It is no beggarly speciality that pre- 
scribes a single duty or condemns a single vice, but it is 
the whole life of true souls in their relation to each other, 
under God. 

Like all virtues it has two sides according as it is more 
receptive or communicative, passive or active. On the one 
side it is suscej)tible, or open to affection ; judicious, or 
mindful of the guiding principle ; comprehensive, or careful 
of the whole range of fellowship. On the other, or more 
active side, it is earnest, enterprising, faithful, determined to 
carry out its loyalty heartily, effectively, and thoroughly. 
The first part may present more of the feminine side, and 
the second part more of the masculine side of the virtue, as 
the Psyche of the" old myth represents the sensible, tender, 
discreet woman, and Eros represents the more determined 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 297 

and daring man. The two traits tend, however, more and 
more to blend with each other ; and man becomes somewhat 
womanly, and woman somewhat manly when true love 
unites them, and Eros and Psyche mingle their blood and 
their life together. 

With all good or philosophical moralists we distinguish 
between virtues and duties, and regard virtue as the force 
that gives duty its motive, while duty is the path in which 
virtue is to move. It would be a fine thing for our literature 
if we had a really good book on the whole subject — a wise 
and edifying treatise, that should handle broadly, deeply, and 
generously the relations of the sexes, setting forth the true 
laws of their life, with due notice of their perils and de- 
rangements. The materials abound in various quarters, but 
they have not yet been brought together. The old books 
of fatherly and motherly epistles to sons and daughters are 
obsolete, and are written as if young people did not know 
much of any thing about themselves or the world, and they 
have probably less wisdom in matters of the heart than a 
considerable portion of what is generally stigmatized as 
light reading. A few pages on the subject may be found in 
our current manuals of ethics, but we believe that the Ger- 
man moralists are the only ones who have treated it with 
any thing like its proper fulness and earnestness. The 
French have handled it well in their way, and their gifted 
women of the best character have given us excellent hints 
and helps toward a better understanding of the human 
heart and its home relations. The majority of Frenchmen, 
however, whose works on the topic suggest themselves 

M2 



298 AMERICAN LIFE. 

to us, are any thing but edifying or comforting. What can 
be more corrupting than Balzac on Marriage ? and what more 
frightful than Debreyne, for twenty-five years both priest 
and physician, in his revelations of the abuses of the love 
passion ? Perhaps the best thoughts may be found scat- 
tered through the poetry, essays, and fictions of our time ; 
for literature now has become the great school of the heart, 
and the novel often takes the place of the confessional, ask- 
ing questions and telling secrets that of old were not spoken 
to the general air, but whispered in ghostly presence. 
Women themselves, to whom love is no small part of 
religion as well as of life, are now writing some of the 
best poems and stories, and are giving us, thank God ! their 
side of the truth and often their side of the tragedy. Bet- 
ter days are coming, we believe ; and never since time was 
has so high an ideal of the true relation between man and 
woman been set forth as by our best authors. Both par- 
ties are understanding each other, and being just and gener- 
ous to each other ; and we are no longer in danger of look- 
ing upon woman as wishing to be the weak toy of man's 
pleasure or the strapping rival of his hardihood. They are 
confessing their need of each other in every plane of life, 
from the natural to the spiritual ; and the chart and compass 
are before us for a safe and pleasant voyage over the great 
sea together, if we will use them wisely. 

Nothing is clearer than the fact that woman invariably 
gains whenever love is placed upon its true ground, and 
her relation to man is regarded in its highest plane. Upon 
the level of mere material existence or animal life she loses 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 299 

in comparison with man. He is generally stronger, and he 
can command her, enslave and beat her if he will, and his 
mere instinct is an insufficient protection for her when sick 
or infirm from the cares of maternity and other causes. 
When his interest in her depends upon his passions, his 
interest tends to cease precisely when her need of his in- 
terest deepens ; and not only savage life, but what we call 
our civilized society abounds in atrocities on the part of 
man toward his victim. Most of the saddest misery that 
we see comes from the wrongs of women ; and while busy 
with this essay I have had cases come before me profession- 
ally that are enough to make a man ask whether we are 
living in a Christian land or under the grossest paganism. 
A nice elderly woman, whose widow's weeds have for years 
won respect, did not appear, as usual, for her share of relief. 
I found her daughter, a simple, honest girl, with a baby in 
her arms. " Are you married ? " I asked. " Yes," was the 
reply, and the husband was supposed to be a competent 
accountant. " How long did he stay with you ? " " He 
staid three months, and I have not seen him since." That 
tells the story of the tragedy that is going on in our cities 
and large towns from day to day. The decent American 
woman in humble life is more strict than her English com- 
peer, and we do not seem to have many of the miserable 
class that Joseph Kay describes so graphically in his book 
on the social condition of England. But marriage in form 
is no security for its proper duties ; and in ranks where 
public opinion is feeble or hardly exists, and religious ob- 
ligation is not cherished, marriage is the frequent pretext 



300 AMERICAN LIFE. 

to cover the vilest treachery, and the wife is deserted, bur- 
dened and desolate as the harlot can not be. The law 
promises redress, but what does the redress amount to 
when obtained at such trouble and cost, and when it may 
only bring about a second act of the same tragedy whose 
first act almost took the sufferer's life away ?. Why women 
allow themselves to be so entangled is the constant wonder, 
and the solution probably is, that they see out of their own 
eyes, and judge men by themselves, and think a man's 
promises answer to a woman's heart as truly as to her ear. 

This very week I have been led to hear the story of three 
who declared themselves victims of such falsity, and who 
bore the look of respectability and had its surroundings. 
The most estimable and cheering of them all, an exemplary 
and apparently religious woman, with an excellent reputa- 
tion in high quarters, ascribed no small share of her present 
cheerfulness to being rid of a miserable man who had mar- 
ried her while two other wives of his were alive. This 
may have been a dark week as to matrimonial matters, 
but even this dark week has had other aspects of the sub- 
ject quite sufficient to keep one from desponding. 

As to the question of the equality of man and woman 
in their relation to each other and before the court of pub- 
lic opinion, we need not say how much we abominate the 
old heathen notion that woman is born to be man's slave 
or toy. It is not so easy to meet another wrong done to 
her on the ground of her alleged purity, and the conse- 
quent enormity of her offense when she falls from that 
purity. Whatever may be the justice of the verdict, it is 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 301 

almost universal ' and inexorable ; and an erring woman 
when detected is ruined and an utter outcast from society, 
while her betrayer may keep a certain position of nominal 
respectability. Strange to say, many women of society 
called respectable will notice him, while almost all women 
turn their backs upon their erring sister. There is un- 
doubtedly some cause for this distinction in mere taste and 
prudence, since a fallen woman falls more deeply than a 
man is likely to fall, and more of her nature is polluted 
than his by the sin. More of her constitution, her sensi- 
bilities, her affections, is acted upon and degraded. Her 
loveliness in the highest sense is gone, and the temple of 
her purity is foully desecrated, whereas the world readily 
regards laxity of like kind as but an incident in the life of a 
man, and one that may be atoned for by a life of sobriety 
after his wild oats are sown. 

The higher ethics, however, puts a stop to this partial- 
ity, and holds man and woman accountable to the same 
exalted law. The great principle is the same for both — 
a life for a life, a heart for a heart. The true love is as 
exclusive as it is strong, and demands that each shall keep 
solely to the other till death do them part. Man's nature 
may make this exclusiveness more a sacrifice from the heat 
and endurance of his passions ; but he is bound by the 
same principle as woman, and he gains by it in his way as 
she gains in her way. His fidelity gives him a sincerity, 
gentleness, chivalry, and spirituality that loose habits are 
sure to destroy, while her fidelity rewards him with a mag- 
nificence of conjugal and maternal affection and devotion 



302 AMERICAN LIFE. 

that give home its sacredness and bring both nearer 
heaven. We know something of the world and its ways, 
but the more we see of its sins the more we love the good 
old loyalties of the hearth-stone and the altar. 

If more humane and effective laws are needed, in com- 
bination with more effective Christian influence, to protect 
the poorer and less educated classes, a purer and higher 
social code ought to prevail among the cultivated and re- 
fined. There is certainly an approach to such a code in 
the best society, and conduct which might pass with im- 
punity elsewhere is there visited with the general ban. 
High society may neglect sadly its inferiors, and leave 
them to the mercy or the arts of its sons ; but it guards its 
own daughters somewhat sternly from insult and wrong. 
Excommunication is the penalty to be paid by the offender 
who assails their honor, and even in our peaceful and anti- 
duelling community death is thought to be the seducer's 
just doom ; and public opinion may blame, but does not 
denounce, the father or brother who takes the law into his 
own hands. Yet there are many wrongs that are not 
guarded against, and many sources of suffering that are left 
open. We can not say that man is always the aggressor, 
for we are sure that he is sometimes the aggrieved party ; 
but it is clear that the social code is in many respects wrong 
or deficient, and it fails to adjust rightly affairs and re- 
lations that are vital to social welfare. We have been 
tempted to laugh at the Courts of Love which were held in 
the age of Chivalry to settle delicate questions of gallantry, 
and have been amused to note that the last of them was 



THE ETHICS OF LOVE. 303 

convened at the call of the great Richelien, who found 
some matters too subtle even for his diplomacy, and who 
called in gentler fingers and brighter eyes than his to see 
into and unravel the web. Such a court would not be 
amiss now, and it is certain that the old code of thirty-one 
articles would be wholly inadequate to the present de- 
mands of society. But we need not fear that we shall 
long be without such jurisdiction, for woman rules society 
as man rules politics, and sessions formal and informal are 
constantly held, that tend to adjudicate the rights and 
duties of love, and to define the just relations between man 
and woman, whether married or single. It is to be hoped 
that some day the social law may be digested and the com- 
mon law of the heart be so codified that he who runs may 
read. It is to be hoped, too, that, while strictness prevails 
in duties essential, liberty will be allowed in things indiffer- 
ent, and the result will be a more free aud varied, genial 
and intellectual fellowship between men and women, that 
shall give the charm of the higher and universal love to 
general society, and help all worthy seekers to find their 
predestined mates in that form of the affection which is 
more private and exclusive. 

Of all striplings who have been called scapegraces, Cupid 
is the most hopeful, and he has the whole future to mend 
his manners and his morals. It is not impossible that he 
may grow up into a first-class angel, and his wings may be 
the means of his aspiration instead of the signs of his 
fickleness, while his bow and arrows may be turned to good 
account as part of the armament of the embattled cheru- 



304 AMERICAN LIFE. 

him that contends for God and humanity against the world, 
the flesh, and the devil. 

So ends our essay on the Ethics of Love. Call it too gay 
or too grave, as you choose, but do not let the poor hand- 
ling harm the good text. 



XIII. 

Garden Philosophy. 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 307 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 

T CONFESS to having been moved to throw out these 
-*- stray thoughts on the wisdom of the garden not in the 
usual way of the poets and essayists who have made the 
subject so charming. Not in blooming June nor ripe Sep- 
tember, but in dull November, after quitting the country 
for the city, and in the midst of the bustle and passion of 
the great electioneering campaign, the fit came upon me 
while looking at the luscious apples and brilliant flowers 
upon the tables of our Horticultural Society ; and had it 
not been for this lovely spring day, this essay might have 
been a kind of digest of the remarks upon the Garden as 
an Educator that were then thrown out impromptu at re- 
quest of friends, while the Democracy were listening to 
their pet orators in the great hall below, and thundering 
out at times applause so deafening that the prize None- 
suches on the table seemed to deepen their blushes, and the 
radiant cactus to tremble in its sensitive petals at the din, 
as if spirits of Paradise were appalled by an outbreak from 
the pit below. But that bluebird's song and these bursting 



308 AMERICAN LIFE. 

buds have given my pen a fresh start, and I quit the old 
notes and write from a more vernal inspiration. 

It is very pleasant to go among the farmers, florists, and 
fruitmen — and I will not forget that November reunion 
now — they are so full of love for their soothing, delightful 
pursuit, and so ready to give the- help of their experience 
to every kindly seeker as to be quite winning to us men of 
books. I confess, however, to some little misgiving when 
asked to enlighten them, in view of my small doings as an 
amateur cultivator. I am afraid that our few acres have 
been more a sink of money than a mine, and that our crop 
of health and pleasure, when compared with our account 
of outlay and income, would bring more than a smile to the 
faces of the thrifty husbandmen who are willing to hear a 
scholar talk of flowers, fruits, and trees with great respect, 
and take it for granted that his practice is as good as his 
theory, and his thrift keeps pace with his taste. I am afraid 
to say how much our potatoes and eggs cost us as compared 
with the market juice; yet sure I am that we got our 
money's worth, for health and enjoyment that are priceless 
come into the estimate, and no meney could tempt us to 
part with the harvest of delights that every year yields from 
our garden. The most thrifty farmer or nursery-man is al- 
ways ready to forgive an amateur a considerable share of 
improvidence if he has only the true love of nature ; and 
on that ground I am able to hold up my head among these 
good people, and talk and write as one of their gentle craft. 
What is said will have more point if we consider the phi- 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 309 

losophy of the garden as a school of science, a workshop of 
art, and a gallery of beauty and sociality. 

Consider first, the school that is opened to us among the 
plants. The place itself is a marvelous lesson, for it sets 
before us the first form of organic life, and teaches us how 
nature rises in vegetation from the earths of the mineral 
kingdom through the world of plants up to meet the realm 
of animal organization with man at its head. The garden 
is thus mediate between the mineral and the animal world 
and has a wonderful chemistry of its own that transforms 
soils of sand, loam, gravel, and clay into the juices and fibre 
of flowers, shrubs, and trees. The last great discovery of 
chemistry brings out this power in clearer light by teaching 
us to see that aU atoms of organic existence consist of but 
two general classes, the crystalloid and the colloid ; and it 
is with vegetation that nature passes from the crystalloid 
to the colloid, and begins to build up her wondrous archi- 
tecture of living things. How this is done we do not know. 
We see that the crystals of sand and limestone are dissolved 
and transformed into the starch and gluten of wheat and 
corn ; but our chemical laboratories vainly try to make the 
change with all their science and art ; and all their retorts, 
and acids, and blow-pipes have never been able to make 
bread or bread-stuff — not even an atom of starch or gluten 
— out of earth. Plants are ordained of God to work this 
transformation from crystal to colloid, from mineral to vege- 
table, and each plant has its own line of succession from 
the beginning, and does its wonderful work in its own way, 



310 AMERICAN LIFE. 

and with the same costume and implements as at the begin- 
ning. 

The study of the various soils themselves becomes most 
interesting in itself and its correspondences. A man of 
observation may learn wisdom for himself and his children 
by considering the qualities of his land and what they stand 
for. The mind is sometimes thick and clayey, or light and 
loamy, or drifting and sandy, or hard and gravelly — and 
in each case needs as specific treatment as the soil. Some- 
times too, the good yield of most forbidding soil gives us 
most encouraging hopes for unpromising children and 
youth. I once had five hundred loads, chiefly of clay, carted 
from a dirty swamp-hole to fill up a bog, and was fright- 
ened to see such an unsightly vacancy in the first locality 
and such a cold, barren surface in the second. But the 
empty hole soon became a pretty pond, and the dismal clay 
smiled and laughed itself into a green and luxuriant 
meadow. Who will despair either of soils or souls after 
such an experience. 

Then what a lesson a man may learn from the marvelous 
variety of growths in his garden. Saintine, the author of 
that charming story of a. flower in a prison-yard, has lately 
died, and the grateful earth might fitly bloom out violets, 
lillies and roses upon the grave of so loyal a lover of nature 
and man. If his prison-hero found a world in that one 
plant that pushed its way up between the stones, and be- 
came the subject of that lovely prose-poem, we surely are 
more favored, aud we all have field enough for our survey 
and our pleasure. The little plots of a few square feet with 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 311 

vine and roses behind our city houses, or the broad acres of 
our great park, give us all our botanic garden, where we 
may be wiser with Ray, and Goethe, Linnaeus, and Jussieu, 
if we will. If the naked eye soon exhausts its range in 
our little field of vision, try the microscope, and what 
wonders disclose themselves beneath our feet and give en- 
chantment to the very dust we tread ! I once passed the 
rambling hours of a week in the country in this way, peep- 
ing into the grounds at the risk of being thought crazy, and 
was ashamed of. my old ignorance and astounded by 
the new found-wisdom. Even in the hard paths under our 
feet there is a world of hidden beauty — flowers of most 
exquisite tint and form; and never more reverently did I 
quote Wordsworth's lines that tell us, "Wisdom is oft- 
times nearer when we stoop than when we soar." 

When we walk through a garden of any magnitude 
we are surrounded with such a multitude and variety of 
growths as to be almost oppressed with those riches, and 
we find it hard to classify them under one dominant 
law. The lichens and mosses, the ferns and funguses, 
the trailing and climbing vines; the flowers of all hues 
and forms, the esculent plants so various, some ripening 
their fruit under ground and others lifting it into the 
air and light; the clover and the grasses, the trees de- 
ciduous and evergreen of all sizes and shapes, from the 
low juniper to the soaring elm — what a world is thus 
set before us! and how shall we bring all this motley 
crowd of growths to any sort of order, and arrange them 
under any satisfactory system? This question has not 



312 AMERICAN LIFE. 

only perplexed simple observers of nature like ourselves, 
but even the shrewd masters of botanic gardens ; and it 
is still not wholly clear by what marks plants are to be 
classified. It is still the ruling habit of popular speech 
to classify plants under the heads of trees, shrubs, and 
herbs according to their mere size. But careful observa- 
tion shows the folly of this arrangement, by showing that 
plants of the most various dimensions belong to the same 
organic family; the bamboo, thirty feet high, being a 
kind of grass, and the lowly harts-tongue being of the 
same general division as the great tree-ferns that rival 
the palm. But when the error of this superficial system 
was seen, it took years for naturalists to hit upon the 
true criterion. The system of Rivinus, in 1690, was 
based upon the formation of the corolla or circlet of 
flower-leaves. The system of Kamel, in 1693, depended 
upon the characteristics of the fruit alone, while Magnol, 
in 1720, looked to the calyx or outer envelope as well 
as to the corolla ; and at last Linnaeus, in 1731, drew 
his system from the variations in the stamens and pistils or 
the reproductive organs of the flower. We were brought 
up to believe in this last system, and some of us remember 
well how we used to plod over its pedantic terms, and 
write them again and again from set copy into our writing- 
books at school. Before Linnaeus, however, a sagacious 
Englishman, Ray, had a glimpse of the better science of 
vegetation, and in 1703 had grouped plants either as 
flowerless or flowering, and had subdivided the flowering 
into dicotyledons and monocotyledons, according as the 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 313 

germ is nourished by two or one seed-lobe. The idea of 
Ray waited for its complete development till the time of 
Jussieu, who presented the first principles of his Natural 
System to the French Academy of Sciences in 1773, and 
finished his great Exposition of this system in 1789, eleven 
years after its commencement. His system with some 
modifications now prevails, and plants are divided into the 
asexual or flowerless and the sexual or flowering. With- 
out puzzling our readers with learned terms, it is better to 
take them out into the garden and teach them how to see 
for themselves the leading characteristics of plants. Con- 
sider, first, such as are asexual or flowerless. These are of 
two kinds : first, those that have stems and leaves undis- 
tinguishable, such as the, sea- weed, the fungus, the lichen ; 
secondly, those that have leaves and stems distinguishable, 
such as ferns and mosses. There can be no difficulty in 
understanding at once these two classes of the first order 
of plants ; for any toad-stool or mushroom shows us a plant 
both flowerless and without distinguishable leaves and 
stem. Pluck, moreover, a leaf of fern of any kind, and 
instead of flowers or seeds, you will note on the back of 
the leaf little elevations that look like barnacles, and from 
these come the spores that propagate the plant. Thus you 
have the two classes of flowerless plants. 

I am willing to be laughed at for quaintly simplifying 
the second and principle order of plants, the sexual or 
flowering; and once amused an intelligent and good- 
natured audience by producing a cornstalk and a stick of 
sassafras as specimens of the two orders of the second of 

N 



314 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the two great divisions. All the plants that are most im- 
portant to us are either of the cornstalk or the sassafras 
family. Perhaps it is best, however, to take a more famil- 
iar specimen than the sassafras, and we will hold up the corn- 
stalk and the maple branch before our readers as specimens. 
The cornstalk is a somewhat homely creature, but has the 
most distinguished relatives, and is of the family of the 
grasses, lilies, and palms. All our cereals are of this fam- 
ily, and without its help man and beast must come near 
starving. The characteristic marks are obvious. The 
cornstalk grows from within and is endogenous, and, more- 
over, the germ is fed from only a single cotyledon or seed- 
lobe. In this as in the other plants of its class, there is no 
clear distinction between the wood and the bark. 

Pass to the other or exogenous class of the same grand 
divison of flowering plants, and we have, as in the maple 
and all our forest trees, and most of our fruits and flowers 
the constant mark of the formation of the wood from with- 
out inward, so as to record each successive season of growth 
in the rings of the trunk or branch beneath the bark which 
is distinct from the wood. The germ, moreover, in grow- 
ing is nourished by two seed-lobes instead of one. It is 
interesting and instructive to carry these simple principles 
in our mind as we ramble through our groves, and orchards, 
and garden with pruning-knife and microscope in hand. 
We soon find ourselves becoming tolerable botanists with- 
out crazing our heads with a catalogue of outlandish 
names. We can train even our little children to read this 
grand yet obvious alphabet of nature, and tell whether a 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 315 

plant belongs to the flowering or flowerless division; 
whether to the family of toad-stools, mosses, and ferns, or 
to the family of grasses and trees ; and to decide to which 
branch of this last great family it belongs — whether to 
the grass and cornstalk tribe, or to the tribe of maples and 
roses. When we have found the place of a plant in the 
grand division, and its general class, it is interesting to 
hunt up its especial order and tribe, and say exactly what 
it is in common phrase. Here, for example, we have a 
clump of oaks of various kinds, big and little, that have 
colonized that corner of our ground. Cut off a branch or 
twig from each. Ascertain by the wood that it belongs to 
the grand division of flowering plants, and to the first class 
exogenous and dicotyledonous, and then trace it out to the 
second subdivision of plants without corolla, and to its or- 
der, according to Loudon, among the urticea with rough 
points or stinging hairs, and see its odd affinity with the 
nettle that gives the order the name ; or, as other botanists 
have it, we may rank it with the cupuliferce or cup-bearing 
trees among the chestnuts, and beeches, and hazels. Thus 
we have fixed the place of the oak according to the natural 
system. Then we can compare the leaf and wood with 
those of other oaks described in the catalogues or plates, 
and tell just what kind of oak it is. Every such search 
will teach us a great deal, and if we have a good botanist 
at hand great is the gain. A plain farmer who has learned 
the trees and shrubs by heart is an admirable colleague to 
the botanist, and may tell us at once what a plant is be- 
fore the scholar can study it out, and may rid us of a vast 



316 AMERICAN LIFE. 

deal of trouble by teaching us by its common name where 
to look for our full scientific description. I am half 
ashamed to say that in our own little domain there are still 
many wild plants that I can not call by name, nor identify 
with any of the descriptions and plates in my books. Very 
likely that solid farmer or his buxom wife or pretty daugh- 
ter, whom we sometimes pass on their way to the village, 
might wholly dispel our darkness by a word as familiar as 
any in the kitchen and herb garden to the rural pop- 
ulation. 

We know very well that the knowledge which is gener- 
ally sought from the garden is not of the scientific kind, 
and gardening is a very different thing from botanizing. 
It is not safe, of course, to base our cultivation upon 
learned classifications ; and he would be a funny horticul- 
turist who should portion off his grounds after the system 
either of Linnaeus or Jussieu, and insist on keeping by 
themselves all plants not found in the same botanic classes. 
This rule would compel us to keep the cucumber and 
pumpkin away from the corn, and forbid the rose to show 
its lovely head near the green turf which best sets off its 
beauty, or to mate with the lily that so completes its 
charm. We must bring economy and taste as well as sci- 
ence to bear upon our garden before we combine all 
desirable variety with unity, aud integrate the differences 
of our vegetation by a judicious singleness of aim. In this 
way we reach the practical economy of gardening, and are 
able to bring our science into the service of our art. The 
true economy must, of course, have in view both utility 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 317 

and beauty, for there can be no good garden without both 
elements ; since the potato-patch and currant and rasp- 
berry bushes are none the less profitable by being neatly 
and even prettily arranged, and the winding paths through 
fresh lawns or under shady trees are full of healthful influ- 
ence, strengthening the limbs by inviting exercise, and 
cheering the spirits by various aspects of loveliness. 

As to the complete idea of the garden, the estimate 
must differ as our jDoint of view or aim differs. If we were 
writing for a prince with ready millions at command, we 
might perhaps take Lord Bacon's estimate, and say that 
thirty acres are not too much- for a prince-like garden, with- 
out including the forest park or farm. It is easy to see 
how his plan might be adapted to modern taste, and made 
quite charming, by doing away his absurd Dutch squares, 
and set circles, and cumbrous carpentry. If laid out liter- 
ally by his plan, his thirty acres would become a magnifi- 
cent baby-house, and confirm his own remark, "that when 
ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build 
stately rather than to garden finely, as if gardening were, 
the greater perfection." His four acres of green in the en- 
trance, with two long walks in covered alleys on either side, 
would be a dismal affair without trees or shrubs to cheer 
the eye and relieve the loiterer from the necessity oi 
hiding under the covering of carpenter's-work, twelve feet 
high, to escape the glare and heat of the summer sun. 
Nor do we see much charm in his artificial mound j(in the 
middle of the twelve-acre garden proper), thirty feet high, 
for " some fine banqueting-house, with some chimneys neatly 



318 AMERICAN LIFE. 

cast, and without too much glass." His heath of six acres 
in the rear, which he would have " formed as much as may 
be to a natural wildness," is more to our modern taste; 
and the only trouble with this portion is that, instead 
of our having all the wild beauty by itself, and all the reg- 
ular beauty by itself, the two should be intermingled, and 
the broad lawn should border on charming flower-beds, of 
various growths, and romantic shrubbery in studied free- 
dom; and art and nature should do their best to help 
each other. 

The case with us, however, is that we are not to devise 
princely methods of magnificence, but republican plans of 
economy ; and the garden that we have in mind must 
needs be one that comes within the average means of lovers 
of nature in America. Any man of moderate means may 
own a few acres, and treat it according to the most ap- 
proved principles of economy and taste. We who are not 
farmers wish, of course, to do as much as we can with our 
little domain, and expect, if possible, to unite the advan- 
tages of park and orchard — flowers for the eye and veg- 
etables for the table. We wish to have the largest crop of 
market value and landscape beauty. Our rule of utility 
may be summed up in a single sentence, and be said to be 
that method of gardening which secures the most products 
of the best quality suited to our needs through the year, 
and so produced as to draw out, without exhausting, the 
various and alternate powers of the soil. To carry out 
this rule, even in a kitchen-garden of half an acre, will be 
no small study and discipline to the shrewdest calculator 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 319 

and economist. Books have been written on " Our Farm 
of Two Acres," " Four Acres," and " Ten Acres." I shall be 
glad to see as good a book as these on " Our Garden of One 
Acre," or " Half," or " Quarter of an Acre." I have so humble 
a sense of my own attainments in these economics of garden- 
ing that I will not pretend to be overwise, but be more 
ready to remember the constant comfort and health of our 
unfailing supply of fresh vegetables through the season, 
than to school our readers in the art of money-making out 
of carrots and potatoes, strawberries and grapes. 

The economics of the beautiful I am more free to speak 
of, and am quite sure that beauty is far nearer to us, if we 
will seek it, than is commonly supposed. The great secret 
is to follow the lead of nature, and try not to overlay na- 
ture by ambition, and not to fall into poor artifice in our 
search for art. The idea of God in nature is obvious. He 
unites ever difference with unity, and always brings to- 
gether a large array of various elements around some 
central purpose. The great universe, our solar system, 
our earth, or any large prospect on its surface, or, if we 
specify particular objects, we may say that a tree, a bird, 
an animal, or, above them all, a human body, these manifest 
wonderful diversity of parts in unity of aim — and the study 
of creation opens an inexhaustible school of beauty. The 
nearer the garden comes to the variety and unity of nature 
so much the better for its completeness. There, as in na- 
ture, the lines of beauty and utility should be mingled ; 
and while we should not be ashamed to plant our esculents 
and even our fruit trees iii rows, we should study to secure 



320 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the curve of grace wherever we can consult taste, and allow 
the generous eye and the easy foot to move in the line of 
beauty. He is happy who can have enough of flowing or 
living water in his grounds to help him to dream of the 
lake, the river, and the ocean ; enough of rise and fall on 
the surface to relieve the scene from monotony, if not to 
suggest the images of the hills and cliffs of his romantic 
rambles and reveries ; enough of lawn and grove to unite 
the charms of the open meadow with the forest shrubs ; 
flowers, shrubbery, and orchard enough to present the use- 
ful and the- beautiful injudicious harmony, and to help the 
master and his friends to discern distinctly the hand of 
God — the All- wise and the All-lovely — in the domain. 
I believe most sincerely in making the garden thus a mi- 
crocosm, an epitome of nature, a chapter out of the great 
Cosmos. We read that Father Adam heard the voice of 
God in the midst of the garden, and our faith is that the 
same God is with us ; and with all our illumination we are 
wretched scholars if we have not learned to hear His 
word as it speaks to us amidst the flowers and trees. Lord 
Bacon well says, " God Almighty planted, a garden, and 
indeed it is the purest of human pleasures." Base surely is 
the mind that forgets Him in this purest of pleasures, or 
fails to see His wisdom and goodness in its riches. 

One glance at the science of horticulture prepares the 
way for looking at the art, and so we pass from the garden as 
a school to regard it as a work-shop. It is certainly the 
oldest of work-shops — older by far than the carpenter's or 
smith's — and the place where man learned to earn his 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 321 

bread by the sweat of the brow. Strength surely is born 
of this labor, and the working power of the race comes 
mainly from the tillers of the ground. Without undertak- 
ing to call farm labor wholly blessed, or to think it alto- 
gether a luxury to work ten hours a day in the broiling sun, 
we may surely say that no form of muscular activity is more 
beneficial than that which belongs to a judicious round of 
gardening. It compels us to take every attitude, and call 
every muscle into use. We read of, and sometimes see, 
ingenious calisthenic exercises that are so contrived as to 
bring the whole body into healthy motion, but no artificial 
ingenuity can compare with gardening as a gymnastic ex- 
ercise. What variety of implement, posture, and move- 
ment there may be in a single morning's work ! We may 
sit, or stoop, or walk, or stand, with rake, hoe, trowel, spade, 
or plow. I certainly never knew what muscles I had till 
bringing them out in this various work. There is a great 
deal that a gentle hand may do, and grace as well as health 
attends the fair woman who plays the Flora or Pomona of 
the domain, and tends her flowers, vines, and trees, as a 
good housewife only can do. Beauty is lovelier at this task 
than at any play ; and a rational man on the way to matri- 
mony might be more readily won by the charming contrast 
between the delicate hand and foot of the fair amateur 
gardener, and the brown earth and usefel trowel or pruning- 
knife, than by the brilliant belle of the ball-room with its 
surfeit of splendors and its monotony of unbroken display. 
There is nothing, moreover, better for a sedentary man, or 
student of delicate habit, than moderate practice in the gar- 

N2 



322 AMERICAN LIFE. 

den. There is variety enough to keep his attention, and 
effort enough to stir his blood, quicken his senses, and point 
his purpose. He may profitably try once in a while the harder 
forms of labor, and learn from experience what hard work is. 
Let him go at the stones of the little or large quarry with 
sledge-hammer and crow-bar, or try his hand with the axe 
at felling some dead or doomed cedar or sycamore, and his 
aching flesh and bones, and panting breath, and swelling 
veins will soon teach him his limitations, give him new re- 
spect for his rough comrades at the business, and read him 
a new version of the old Latin saw, " Non omnes omnia 
possumus," or, " We can not all do all things." 

Skill as well as strength is found in tilling the ground, 
and the horticulturist who is master of his art need 
not hang his head before any adept in accomplishment. 
To be able to adapt each plant to its soil and condi- 
tions, to train and prune, to bud and graft, and perform all 
the nice offices of gardening, with the attendant supervision 
of fowls, cattle, and horses, and the due prevention of blights 
from the elements and ravages from noxious insects, requires 
a rare union of aptitudes and crafts, and seems almost to 
call for all handiworks and vocations in one. Some persons 
have a charmed touch for trees and flowers. A good 
nursery-man has his own gift of nature as well as train- 
ing, and there is something more than superstition in the 
legend of St. Rosa of Lima, one of our few American saints 
of the canon, who is said to have had such witchery over 
the vegetation that the roses and lilies bloomed out at her 
approach.- Some temperaments are certainly in peculiar 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 323 

harmony with plants, and seemed to be loved by them as 
well as to love them. Perhaps there may be something in 
the influence of animal electricity over the growth of vege- 
tation that may explain the apparent marvel, though I am 
not one of those who insist upon explaining all faith away 
by the materialist's creed or no creed. 

If we add the skill of horticulture to the rugged health 
that belongs to outdoor labor in the wholesome air of the 
.country, we certainly have a work-shop worthy of the school 
which should prepare us for it. Little as the rural popula- 
tion come up to the proper standard of their privileges, we 
may be quite sure that we need them to recruit our ex- 
hausted city vitality, and that our great towns would mis- 
erably degenerate without constant reinforcement from the 
bone and sinew, the fresh blood and brain of the green fields. 
So far, indeed, as the science of health and the art of living 
are concerned the city has the advantage ; and were it not 
for our better knowledge of medicine, ventilation, bathing, 
cooking, etc., we might all , languish and die, until a fresh 
migration came in from the bush. Undoubtedly the best 
science as well as art is to be found in the great centres of 
life, and if we therefore receive much from the country we 
are. bound to give much in return, and carry our culture 
and knowledge into the villages and fields. 

There is probably no piece of ground in the whole land 
better worth seeing than our Central Park, that work-shop 
of so much labor and studio of so much art. We ought to 
rejoice in it not only for its direct pleasures, but for its in- 
fluence as a model garden upon the whole nation. Every 



324 AMERICAN LIFE. 

man's acres ought to be lovelier for that careful and mag- 
nificent enterprise and achievement. There is something 
there for every man to learn, whether for the millionaire 
bent on laying out his princely acres wisely, or the thrifty 
workman who would know what is the best vine to trail 
over his cottage or the best shade trees to set before his 
door. The element of beauty is evidently becoming more 
and more a popular study with us, and the taste for land- 
scape-gardening is making more general advances in Amer- 
ica than any other art except music, which goes so well 
along with it and seems to call for it as the song of the bird 
calls for the grove and the flowers, " whose breath," says 
Lord Bacon, " is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and 
goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand." 

The beautiful arts are brought before us by this illus- 
tration in their two classes — the arts of the hand, that 
appeal to the eye, and the arts of the voice that appeal to the 
ear. Now surely the garden is the atelier for both classes 
of arts, and on the one hand invites architecture, sculpture, 
and painting, and on the other hand rewards music, poetry, 
the drama, and eloquence. We must have some kind of 
building there, and any man of the least taste can play the 
architect upon some rustic bower, even if he has too much 
good sense or modesty to venture upon planning his own 
house or stable or conservatory. One may be well amused 
at the effect that may be produced by a little money, where 
there is plenty of rustic timber. I built of our own cedar 
wood two rough arbors several years ago, which cost but 
twenty and thirty dollars, and now that the vines have cov- 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 325 

ered them they have risen into romantic beauty, and no 
costly summer-house of the old, artificial pattern can com- 
pare with them for a moment. My favorite retreat in the 
heat of the summer days is in the least costly of the two , 
and the pomp of millionaires seems ridiculous when I sit 
with some noble book in hand under the shelter of my 
twenty-dollar study, with stately oaks and walnuts around, 
with chirping birds and chattering squirrels, keeping com- 
pany with the ceaseless murmur and rustle of their leaves. 
Two years ago I tried my hand at a statelier structure, under 
the spur of a generous gift, and with the help of a young 
student of architecture, who is now winning honors in the 
great school of architects in Paris. His drawing was charm- 
ing, but the thing itself is more so ; and the rustic tower 
with five pointed arches on its stately rock foundation, 
is a picturesque feature of the whole neighborhood, and is 
intended to bear aloft our sacred flag with the holy sym- 
bol of our faith. It stands upon a cliff whose face bears 
the inscription, " God and Country," which was cut by a 
soldier on his way to the war in 1862, and who brought 
back his shoulder straps to the stone work-shop in peace. 
The cost was only about two hundred dollars at the worst 
of all seasons for building, and in common times it might 
have been built for little more than half that sum. Who 
will laugh at me for erecting three handsome buildings for 
two hundred and fifty dollars? Let him laugh who wins. 
I am willing to be laughed at by any body who will get 
more beauty and enjoyment for less money. Our acres are 
enriched for our lifetime, and our summers are idealized for 



326 AMERICAN LIFE. 

a sum of money which might be easily sj:>ent upon a ball- 
dress or a dinner. 

Sculpture as well as architecture belongs to the garden. 
It is well to have means to set up fountains, vases, and 
statutes, for these do much to fill out and integrate the 
landscape. But little wealth is needed to bring the sculp- 
tor's eye for mass and form and light and shade to bear 
upon the prospect. Every grove and clump of trees or 
shrubs is a study in form and grouping. Swedenborg says 
that trees represent men ; and whether he is right or not, 
we know that the finest statuesque effects may be produced 
by due selection and massing of trees and shrubs, so as fitly 
to combine and contrast the drooping willow or elm with 
the spire-like fir or hemlock, or the rounding maple or oak. 
At night the eye, in some respects, enjoys still more the 
sculptor's art of giving beauty and grandeur to mass and 
form. In our little domain it was a new revelation to me 
years ago, when I began to walk at evening in our groves 
of cedars and maples, and oaks, and to note the sky-line of 
shadow and light which so brought out their expression. 
The place had a solemn, grand, cathedral look ; and two or 
three cedars that had no particular charm in the daytime 
rose up into romantic beauty then, and their tips seemed to 
be ready to volunteer to be built into the walls of some old 
minster, in order to complete or repair the work of the 
glorious dreamer amon£ the builders of the ancient times. 
The landscape-gardener must needs be a sculptor in taste if 
not in talent, and so arrange buildings, walks, lawns, trees, 
water, shrubbery, and all things in the view as to give all 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 327 

the true measure and proportion, and bring out new power 
and charm, under all the changing lights and shades of 
nature. Every man of common sense practices the same 
art, however, when little conscious of it ; and he who trains 
a woodbine upon a stately tree, or an ivy upon a solid wall, 
belongs to the illustrious craft that ranks Phidias and 
Michael Angelo among its princes. He is a sculptor not in 
dead wood or brass or stone, but in materials quite as ready 
to obey the call of taste and imagination, and give those 
effects of form and light and shade that lend the handiwork 
of the chisel its power and charm. 

And who shall tell the capacities of the garden for the 
painter's art, with its display of figure, color, and perspec- 
tive. Landscape gardening is landscape painting, with a 
stouter instrument than the pencil, indeed, and with richer 
and more living colors than any on the pallet. It may be 
that the material is so near at hand, and often so ample as 
to leave little to the invention of art ; and he sometimes 
treats nature most generously who most scrupulously lets 
her alone in beauty unadorned, and thus adorned the most. 
But generally the loveliest ground needs clearing and ar- 
ranging. In fact, rural art is never so perfect as when it 
brings out nature ; and culture of the soil, as of the soul reveals 
the fairest of its capacities, and lights up the face with its 
best expression. You must first be able to see your ground 
properly, and so also to see from it into the distance. If 
your garden is a wilderness of nature, where you can hard- 
ly see a rod before your face, you are not master of 
your domain, for you can not, either by sight or by 



328 AMERICAN LIFE. 

imagination, take in its extent or richness, nor own it 
with your eye, the most imperial of the senses. True art 
will not show the whole at once, but what it does show 
will imply the rest, as the hand or foot implies the whole 
body. The thicket that you let remain will combine with 
that which you cut away to give the due proportion of seclu- 
sion and openness, and your priming-knife or bush-nook well 
plied will sometimes do wonders in bringing your tangled 
wilderness into the proportions of a picture. One of our 
great painters showed me a few years ago a picture on can- 
vas twelve feet by seven, which embodied only a week's > 
work, and* was a noble sketch of a storm in the Rocky 
Mountains, with all the features of snow-capped peaks, 
majestic cliffs, highland lakes, browsing deer, running- 
brooks, stately trees, and gentle flowers. If he had been 
two months at work upon the piece the result before the 
eyes would be enough to show for the labor and time. Yet 
I have seen more marvelous transformations than that 
wrought by the knife and axe. Cut away a few bushes 
and branches within that grove on the hill, and there is a 
full view, a grand picture, of the sea, with its changing 
waters, and its rich effects of storm and calm, moonlight 
and sunlight, now with broad and unbroken surface, and 
now all alive with vessels under steam or sail. I have 
seen an arbor that Eve might not scorn made in a couple 
of hours by clearing out the interior of a thicket of alders 
and young cedars, opening a lovely carpet of ground pine 
under foot and preparing the way for the woodbine, the 
clematis, and the honey-suckle to run up the bushes of the 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 329 

encircling walls, and to cover them with their rich and ever- 
varying festoons and arabesques. 

The proper application of the principles of perspective 
to any little domain as simple as ours may not shame any 
painter's art, and what has already been done there is 
enough to show that the pruning-knife is ally to the pencil 
and both may minister to the spirit of beauty. The ele- 
ment of color, too, needs careful treatment, and is much 
under command of taste and imagination. The hues of 
nature, indeed, we do not create ; but we find them, and, 
not as the painter finds them, in parcels assorted and labeled 
at his order, but in natural combination. The rose is not 
of a single reel, nor the pink or the violet of a single pink 
or violet shade. But there is great choice in the selection 
and grouping of flowers, shrubs, and trees, so as to bring 
out the true melody and harmony of color. We may call 
the color the music of the light, and, as in music, we may 
find in color melody and harmony. That rose, with droop- 
ing head and blushing cheek, has its own native air or mel- 
ody, like the song of the robin or bluebird ; and that 
fuschia, with pendant and jeweled drops, seems to answer 
the rose's queenly air with her own gentler tones. But 
group the whole array of plants of color duly, and what 
harmony is the result! Sometimes different clusters or 
beds of well-chosen flowers seem to answer each other like 
the responsive choirs of the cathedral ; and it may not be 
altogether conceit to say that in a well-concerted garden 
you may have all voices of color music, from the deep base 
of the ruddy rose to the thrilling soprano of the violet. 



330 AMERICAN LIFE. 

We need to take account of all the changes of season and 
periods of vegetation to bring out the proper effects of 
color, and the good gardener will sow his seed and arrange 
his flowers so as to leave no month uncheered from the 
time when the bluebird pipes on the advance-guard of 
spring, and pecks at the swelling buds of the maple, to the 
time when the sere and yellow leaf gives such glory to 
autumn, and, the snow-bird is seen on his way to sum- 
mer skies. All the hues of nature, of course, should be 
made to contribute their part to the pictured series of 
months, and great account should be made of the constant 
features of the landscape, such as the evergreens and the 
mosses and the rocks that give such charm to winter when 
summer life is no more. 

The vocal arts can not fail to feel the power of the haunt 
thus prepared for them in the landscape ; and music, poetry, 
the drama, and even eloquence, are ready to catch inspira- 
tion from the arts of rural architecture, sculpture, and paint- 
ing. Nature surely gives us music enough to call out our 
voices ; and it is no slight to the birds to practice their art 
on true principles, and make their wild melodies the pre- 
lude to the finer melodies and harmonies of the voice, the 
flute, the harp, or piano. We hear of chamber concerts 
and academy concerts. Why not have garden concerts 
more frequently ? I have certainly sometimes thought even 
the organ-grinder a godsend in the country, and have there 
listened with delight to the old strains that I would have 
closed my ears against in the city, so much does nature set 
off art, and the trees and flowers ask to be interpreted into 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 331 

music. And as to poetry, we are all ready to be poets in 
the country ; and if our fancy is dull of itself, and has no 
Pegasus of its own to ride, it is quite ready to mount upon 
the pillion of some favored son of the Muses, and ride 
with him into the heaven of ideals. How much poetry has 
been written in or about the garden, every library is proof, 
and Parnassus can never be a paved city. Even the poli- 
cies and passions, the lights and shades, and follies and as- 
pirations of city life come most to mind in the country, as 
they see the battle best who look upon it from some tranquil 
hill away from the din and smoke. The drama, too, 
belongs to the garden ; and he who has the true eye may 
see tragedy and comedy all about him in the airs and atti- 
tudes, the loves and the quarrels of insects, reptiles, birds, 
and beasts, and the various play and mien of the more ra- 
tional tenants and ramblers of the domain, with their walks 
and talks, their work and play. It is a good place, too, 
for actual dramatic scenes, especially for pastoral life, and 
there are many parts of our great dramatists that can be 
charmingly enacted in groves or dells, or among flower-beds 
and grassy lawns. Last year a little association of ama- 
teurs of letters spent a day with us in the country, and 
amused themselves and us with recitations. Among other 
selections they gave us the melancholy Jaques with his 
companions in the great scene in the Forest of Arden. 
The famous words " All the world's a stage " gave our lit- 
tle dell, with its canopy of oaks, elms, and walnuts, quite a 
Shakspearian dignity, and we were not at all ashamed to 
have such a scene brought to such a theatre. Nor would 



332 AMERICAN LIFE. 

glorious Will himself have thought the performance alto- 
gether poor. 

As to eloquence, the garden speaks for itself, and is sure 
to make its true friends and lovers speak ; and the finest of 
all speech — that which calls for two parties only, and is 
very likely to fix the destiny of both — flows more freely 
and willingly there in some charming arbor or shady walk 
than in the city drawing-room or promenade. What 
sacred eloquence the garden may inspire none will deny 
who revere Him who bade us consider the lilies how they 
grow, and taught the hidden wisdom of the seed and the 
soil. 

I have been anticipating the last branch of our subject, 
and have implied that the garden may be a gallery of ele- 
gant resort, a saloon of society and conversation. Why 
should not more stress be laid on this idea ? 

There is something in the place itself that favors com- 
panionship ; and when left to ourselves, away from the 
distractions of the world, we make friends of books or find 
them in our neighbors. We feel our social nature more 
when less surfeited with society, and made to hunger and 
thirst for its nurture and refreshing. There is something, 
too, in the ready walks and various paths and scenes that 
invites conversation. The tongue insists on alternating 
with or relieving the active foot, and the eye, in time sa- 
tiated with seeing, asks for the voice to give the listening 
ear its turn. The garden makes Peripatetics of us all, and 
after we have walked half an hour we are impatient to 



GARDEN PHILOSOPHY. 333 

read or talk the next half hour, and keep up the balance 
between body and soul. 

Then what socializers are fruits and flowers by their taste 
and beauty! The pear, peach, apple, cherry, and all the 
smaller fruits of flavor, seem to be half soul and half body, 
and to mediate J)etween the spirit and the flesh. Who 
cares to eat fine peaches or strawberries by himself? We 
must share the treasure, like a choice poem or sparkling 
paragraph. All persons of gentle culture have this feel- 
ing, and every good-hearted man, however rough his hand, 
is no stranger to it. How obvious it is in all fruit-growers 
at their gatherings ! and although the quantity of the 
choice fruit under view may be small, they insist upon 
sharing it in good fellowship. It may be a single choice 
apple or pear for the whole dozen of amateurs ; but out 
comes the pocket-knife, and all have a fair portion. I be- 
lieve that the growing of fine fruits has introduced a new 
element into society, and has made the taste of good 
things to educate the higher taste that feeds on the beauti- 
ful, and brings men together in the fellowship of refine- 
ment and intelligence. The strawberry, the raspberry, the 
peach, and the pear have been great civilizers in America, 
and yet their work is not done as yet. 

The more express beauties of the garden cany out this 
work, and there is something wonderfully assimilating in 
all scenes and objects of pure taste. Flowers are wine to 
the eye, and they who enjoy them find themselves won to 
genial companionship, that softens and exalts and does not 
inebriate. When combined with the various charms of 



334 AMERICAN LIFE. 

the landscape they have a certain enchantment, and the 
rose or the honeysuckle is a precious poem when it inter- 
prets our old homestead or our pet haunt. Then how 
comparatively small the cost of much of this rare beauty. 
Buy a dozen or two of roses or phloxes of choice kinds, as 
you can for some two or three dollars a dozen, and see 
what will come of them. What exquisite bloom in those 
bush-roses, in that splendid Chateaubriand, that luxuriant 
Mrs. Elliott, that stately Pius IX.! and what witchery in 
those climbers that run like roguish imps upon every thing 
that will hold them, and are Puck in frolic and Ariel in as- 
piration ! Those phloxes, I confess, amaze me by the per- 
fection of their color and the continuance of their bloom. 
For two months that Valery has charmed us with its rich 
Magenta clusters, and that Alba perfecta has soothed and 
even evangelized us by those petals of exquisite white, 
with its interior of pink, as if love and purity were blend- 
ing together, and the pure in heart were flaming into 
rapture as they begin to see God. Yet the twelve phloxes 
cost less than a good bottle of wine, and for two months 
their cups have been full of nectar, and now are filling 
again. 

Dear reader, I must break off before I have wholly done; 
and should I say all that comes of itself to the pen on this 
theme, you might tire of my prattle if you were not 
moved to take up the word for yourself, and in your own 
garden at this* charming season ramble and dream, and 
speak out what you and fair nature so well understand to- 
gether without need of any go-between. 



XIV. 

Easter Flowers. 



EASTER FLOWERS. 337 



EASTER FLOWERS. 

TT is one of the obvious marks of our American religion, 
that we are noticing more habitually and affectionately 
the ancient days and seasons of the Christian Church. This 
tendency does not seem to us to come so much from any 
change of doctrine or discipline as from domestic and 
friendly and devout dispositions, and often shows itself 
unequivocally in quarters where the most independent 
thinking prevails, and even where the straitest Puritan 
theology is professed. That Christmas should be every 
where gaining ground, and that Saint Nicholas should be 
held in honor where all other saints are discarded, is not to 
be wondered at, so far us the attraction of Christmas festivi- 
ties is concerned ; for children will be children, and parents 
will be parents, and whatever brings the two parties lov- 
ingly together is in the line of Nature, and is sure to pros- 
per. Yet we believe that with the natural glee of that great 
holiday a great deal of devout faith and affection mingles 
and the gayest carols and the wildest sports have something 
about them that does not end with flesh and blood, but 
which partakes more or less of the higher spirit. Human- 

O 



338 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ity, too, mingles with every true Christinas feast, and the 
poor are every where remembered, not only for their own 
sake, but for the Holy Child who became poor that we 
might become rich. For our own part, we confess to 
having a great liking to a religion that is not afraid of a 
little lauo-h and fun — not fearful that the church windows 
will break, or its walls shake at the explosion of any amount 
of innocent natural spirits. We believe that young and old 
are never in so good a way for enjoying themselves as when 
they are upon solid ground, and can sing and dance a little 
without fearing that the earth will cave in under their feet. 
On this account we can commend a good sound platform of 
faith and fellowship as giving a safe footing for mirth as well 
as worship, and are quite sure that we can move more merrily 
as well as more effectively there than when on doubtful 
ground ; as skaters glide on more boldly and play off their 
most antic evolutions when j:>erfectly sure that the ice will 
not give way beneath them. 

Whatever may be the cause or the effect we are quite 
sure that Saint Nicholas is making his way into universal 
regard, and is likely to stand as high upon, the Puritan as 
the Catholic Calendar, at least so far as home observances 
are concerned. Less attention has been called to the sec- 
ond great festival of the ancient Church, Easter; yet there 
are unmistakable signs that it is fast gaining upon the re- 
ligious affection and public regard of our people. Like 
Christmas, it is winning our household feeling as well as 
our religious respect, and is sacred to the memory of de- 
parted kindred and friends as well as to the rising of our 



EASTER FLOWERS. 339 

Lord from the grave. We have carefully noted the gradual 
increase of observance of the day, and can remember when 
it was a somewhat memorable thing for a minister, not 
Catholic or Episcopal, to preach an Easter sermon. Now 
Easter sermons are very general in all pulpits, and Easter 
flowers are making their way into churches of all persua- 
sions. One of our chief Presbyterian Churches near by 
decked its communion-table and pulpit with flowers as for 
some years, this Easter season ; and we, who have some 
ways of thinking and acting quite our own, made our 
church beautiful with lilies, roses, geraniums, camelias, etc., 
according to fixed usage. We were considerably among 
the florists at this time, and they uniformly reported that 
such a demand had never before been known for the pro- 
ducts of their conservatories. The resources of the city 
and neighborhood were exhausted, and appeals were made 
to Philadelphia and Boston to supply the deficiency, and in 
some cases great prices were offered in vain, a. dollar being 
the price for single lilies. 

The cause for this new love for Easter is to be found 
partly in the unquestionable growth of church feeling in 
our people ; but this feeling is greatly enhanced, and, in 
some cases, almost wholly created by family affections. 
Easter is becoming rapidly the festival of sacred remem- 
brance of departed friends, and the remembrance is all the 
more sacred by remembering them in God and the Beloved 
Son. It is interesting and impressive to observe how pow- 
erfully our congregations are affected, when this use is made 
of the day, and the great sentiment of home love is brought 



340 AMERICAN LIFE. 

into keeping with devout faith. It is quite a revelation to 
note the response that is made by the people when asked to 
bring to the altar some memorial of departed kindred and 
friends. At first we asked for flowers to make the church 
bright and beautiful for the afternoon festival of the Sun- 
day-school children. The gifts came in great abundance, but 
even then the flowers often had a memorial character ; and 
no parents who had lost a dear child could fail to think of 
him or her more tenderly in the midst of that cheerful flock, 
and the flowers themselves, as they sent up their incense to 
the mercy-seat, seemed a message to the lost ones as well 
as our offering to heaven. 

The good effect is not lost but rather helped by making 
part of the service decidedly genial and festive, and quite 
in keeping with the cheerful temper of children. An Eas- 
ter carol or two, a distribution of little gifts, with pleasant 
remarks from the pastor, and other like features, may give 
the day greater compass and attractiveness, and do much 
to enlarge the often too sombre and restricted character of 
our ministrations. It is well to take a hint from good 
Mother Nature as she speaks to us in these charming pets 
of her bosom, the blossoms of spring. The blossoms are 
the pictured cradle of the fruit; and if we would have the 
fruit we must first have the blossoms. We have too often 
forgotten this stubborn fact, and expected a harvest of 
substantial fruit without a childhood of blossoms. We do 
not believe that the Creator has put forth so much of his 
wisdom and power to make the earth beautiful with fra- 
grant blooms, merely to amuse our idle hours ; and we 



EASTER FLOWERS. 341 

regard the beautiful in nature, as in art, as the ally and 
handmaid, of all that is good and true. In the eeonomy of 
creation it is evident that the exquisite tints and odors that 
attend all vegetation in its fecundating and fructifying sea- 
sons are intimately connected with the welfare of the 
future fruit and seed. It is true, also, that in the germina- 
ting seasons of human thought and feeling and purpose, the 
element of beauty is very powerful, and society and relig- 
ion are stronger as well as purer by the graces of art and 
beauties of nature that are enlisted in their behalf. 

Children very readily fall in with all usuages that com- 
bine cheerfulness with reverence, and do it all the better if 
treated as if they were expected to acquiesce in church 
ways as a matter of course and affectionately, instead of 
being everlastingly argued with or scolded into obedience. 
It is really touching as well as amusing to see how earn- 
estly very little ones will do whatever is required of them 
when asked to help out a sacred festival. Three little girls 
distributed our baskets of nosegays to the scholars with 
charming grace, and the smallest of them — a four-year- 
ling, who can usually hardly keep still for a moment — did 
her part famously, and dealt out the bunches of flowers 
with an odd sobriety, as if she were one of the pillars of 
the church or shepherds of the fold. 

The art that is most characteristic of our modern ages is 
undoubtedly music, and antiquity is searched in vain for 
any instrument that can be compared with the organ or 
piano, or any compositions that can be named in the same 
breath with our great oratorios, symphonies, and operas. 



342 AMERICAN LIFE. 

Vast sums of money are every year spent upon music, and 
time, far more valuable than the money, is given without 
stint to musical education. More is to come from this art 
probably than we are now aware of; and we are not only 
to be entertained but refined, moulded, assimilated, and up- 
lifted by its influence as never before. The Creator is not 
chary of the gift, and not only the taste bat the talent is 
bestowed with a bountiful hand among our people ; and 
sometimes the backwoods give us specimens of song from 
native human genius that are as refreshing to our city con- 
noisseurs as the gushing melody of the wild mocking-bird 
is welcome to ears sated with the trained notes of our ca- 
naries. We were at a little amateur concert a few weeks 
since, where an untutored girl from the country rivaled 
the pupils of our first masters in her singing, and after once 
hearing the opera of the Trovatore she gave the famous 
Miserere with a pathos and vitality that would have done 
honor to a practical prima donna. 

God has been even more bountiful surely in those ele- 
ments of beauty that minister to the eye ; and flowers, that 
are scattered beneath our feet almost as freely as the grass, 
are the music of vision, and their notes can be read by 
every body at sight without any study of the gamut or 
counterpoint. Yet within the reach of almost all of us as 
they are, where land is so abundant and the country so ac- 
cessible, they not only admit of the most careful and skill- 
ful culture, but they may be arranged and employed with 
the highest art. We need not undertake to show that 
gardening may be raised to a place among the fine arts, but 



EASTER FLOWERS. 343 

we will affirm, what is far less frequently acknowledged, 
that the effective disposition of flowers requires a taste de- 
cidedly artistic, and even a good bouquet may claim the 
dignity of being an original composition. There is all the 
difference between a well and ill arranged nosegay that 
there is between a piece of manufacture and a work of art; 
and the eye and hand of art will make every flower and 
leaf speak its own word and tell upon the general effect, 
and so secure to the whole arrangement the essential of all 
beauty, diversity in unity, instead of the set patchwork of 
the common bouquets of the shops, which look as if they 
were made by machinery or colored by blocks, like calicoes 
or floor-cloths. 

In one respect flowers are like music : they both speak a 
language of the heart that is at once personal and universal, 
or capable of conveying an individual sentiment, and at 
the same time appealing to a common taste and imagina- 
tion. A lover can sing a serenade under his lady's win- 
dow that shall tell her virtually of his love, and at fhe 
same time charm every chance listener, and no more 
obtrude his own personality on the ear than does the light 
of the moon, which shines on the swain and the passer-by 
with the same impartial splendor. Quite otherwise would 
it be if the swain undertook to tell his emotions in prose 
speech, which, if heard by a stranger, could not but be 
ridiculous or impertinent. Equally expressive is the lan- 
guage of flowers ; and the bouquet that a beauty carries in 
her hand or wears in her bosom may speak to her of the 
love or friendship of the giver, and at the same time de- 



344 AMERICAN LIFE. 

light every beholder with its own intrinsic loveliness. 
This characteristic of flowers fits them especially for the 
use of religion, as they at once express the private affec- 
tions of the givers, and enrich the symbolism of the altar. 
Nothing would be more offensive to a delicate sensibility, 
for instance, than an inscription of personal feelings or at- 
tachments upon the church walls upon festive or solemn 
occasions, and the common devout conscience would pro- 
test against such an obtrusion of private life upon hours of 
public worship. But the basket or cross of flowers can say 
all that the heart wishes to say, and say it without any ob- 
trusion or personal feeling. The beauty that speaks for 
one worshiper speaks also for all, and each rose or lily is 
like one of those old litanies that come down to us from 
time immemorial, and are so inimitable alike by being free 
from all egotism and full of wholesome piety and charity : 
thus being common prayer to all devout souls. The flow- 
ers are of older birth even than those ancient prayers, and 
are primeval litanies from the creative breath of the Eter- 
nal Word. 

We find their eloquence growing upon us from year to 
year, as our charming Easter festival comes round, and 
enriches our church with gathering remembrances and asso- 
ciations that enlist our household loves and griefs, in the 
offerings that are brought to us with unstinted hand. Some 
of the gifts that were lovely of themselves were most im- 
pressive in what they suggested. That beautiful cross of 
lilies upon a shield of green, and surmounted with a crown 
of camelias, is a fit memorial of Helen who went from us some 



EASTER FLOWERS. 345 

six years ago, and who has ever since been similarly remem- 
bered in our Easter festival. She was a rare woman, with a 
mingled delicacy and dignity in her face and bearing that 
made you doubt whether she was born to be a nun or a 
queen. God took her to himself soon after her marriage. Her 
family rightly commemorate her thus in the church by 
whose minister she was baptized and married and buried. 
The font too, in its wonderful beauty, with profusion of 
white flowers of rarest kind in its basin, the ivy and roses and 
carnations that twine the shaft, and the cross of lilies and 
violets that hangs in front, is a brother's memorial of his 
sister, and its Easter adorning is in memory of one of 
Helen's neighbors and friends, a young wife lately called 
away from the earth. In those compositions on evergreen 
shields on each side of the pulpit, the designer veiled a per- 
sonal affection under the garb of a sacred symbol. The 
anchor of white camelias, with its top in the form of the 
cross represents faith with hope ; and the heart of red 
bavardias and carnations that rests upon the centre of the 
cross symbolizes charity, while it also stands for Cordelia 
— a good old name for a daughter, and derived from the 
Latin for heart, and in this sense undoubtedly it is used by 
Spenser and Shakspeare, to mark the loving daughter of 
Lear from her hard-hearted sisters Goneril and Regan. 
Over the whole parterre that cheered and scented the entire 
church, personal affections thus mingled with religious senti- 
ment, and a family that had been for years most gener- 
ous contributors found their gifts this year ministering to 
their grief, as before to their joy ; and the beautiful offer- 

02 



346 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ings that so often had come from the cherished wife and 
daughter's conservatory, threw the fragrance of the garden 
over the place where the burial service had been said over 
her remains. 

We are well aware that in all matters of sentiment like 
that which we are treating, there is great danger of falling 
into sentimentalism, and pampering a morbid and egotistic 
sensibility that tempts people to dwell upon their own emo- 
tions in a kind of self-pity or self-admiration, very much 
like that of one looking into a glass and enjoying the re- 
flection of a gala .dress or a morning costume. We are not 
fond of sentimentalism, and we believe that one means of 
curing it is to be found in giving fitting and healthy expres- 
sion to every genuine feeling. Every form of true affec- 
tion-should have liberty to manifest itself; and sentimen- 
talism ceases the moment the heart, instead of turning in 
upon itself in morbid introversion, goes forth to its rightful 
object in the rigHtful way. Thus marriage is the honest 
and healthful utterance of love ; and the simple, solemn 
words of the marriage-service adjusts fitly the relation of 
two beings who else might have gone mad with passion or 
silly with sentimentalism. Every great affection should 
also have its wholesome utterance ; and undoubtedly a great 
deal of discomfort and suffering always exist,in a community 
where material interests are so supreme, or religion is so harsh 
and dogmatic, as to shut the spiritual world and its people out 
of our thoughts, or at least out of the commemoration of the 
church. We do not profess to have sounded the alleged 
marvels of " Spiritualism," as it is called, to the depths ; but 



EASTER FLOWERS. ' 347 

we are convinced that most of its power over our people 
comes from its recognition of the reality of the unseen 
world and its inhabitants, and of their relation to us. The 
adherents of this new faith are said to be numbered 
by thousands, and even millions, and their existence should, 
if nothing else, teach us that, in this age of natural science 
and material enterprise, there is a yearning after things 
unseen — a craving for some comforting fellowship with 
souls departed this life. We note signs of this disposition 
in the palaces as well as the common homes of Christen- 
dom ; and the beautiful volume of Meditations on the Future 
State, published under the auspices of Queen Victoria, 
from the German of the genial and devout Henri Zchokke, 
is one among the many proofs of the tendencies of home 
affections and griefs to rise above their seclusion into the 
fellowship of universal truth and devotion. The church is 
wise that gives voice and nutriment to all the great human 
experiences and emotions, and has by no means exhausted 
her arts of giving comfort to the bereaved. 

Every great sentiment tends toward some organic 
method ; and thus it is clear that love, patriotism, and de- 
votion all have their characteristic manifestations in the 
family, the nation and the church. How we are to treat 
the dead is a question that every year is doing something 
to settle for us, not only by establishing and adorning cem- 
etries, but creating new forms of memorial art. Tennyson's 
" In Memoriam " is thus not only a monument of literatures 
but a sign of the times, and marks a new era in the conse- 
cration of memory. The poet finds that the thousands of 



348 AMERICAN LIFE. 

readers who can not rival his invention can enter into his 
feeling ; and what he writes of Arthur Hall am is read to 
mean thousands of cherished sons and daughters and 
friends, whose graves are found in every land the sun 
shines upon. It is certainly much to be desired that a taste 
as pure as this poet's should be carried into all forms of 
memorial art, for there is nothing for which many are so ready 
to spend time and money, and nothing in which so much 
time and money are often thrown away. In this country our 
monumental art has made great advances ; yet a man of 
taste is often tempted to wish, as he walks or rides through 
our cemetries, and looks upon the most costly structures, 
that the sculptor had stayed his chisel, and the bountiful 
and graceful hand of Nature had been left to make her 
simple and beautiful memorials in trees and grass and 
flowers. 

We make a great mistake in limiting the bearing of me- 
morial tributes to persons of public service and name; for 
even these, although they are known widely, are not as deep- 
ly loved by the community as by their own kindred, and 
the affections never ask Fame to tell them whom most to 
lament. Often the very qualities that most shrink from 
publicity most win love ; and the eulogies paid to our 
heroes and statesmen and authors are a feeble expression 
of the debt of the living which is constantly paid to the 
dead. Probably most men and most families, if called to 
name the dearest of all names of those no longer seen on 
earth, would speak some word that has little meaning out 
of their own homo circle ; for love, unlike admiration, 



EASTER FLOWERS. 349 

lives by nearness, not by distance, and asks to tend a flower 
rather than to adore a star. We confess to sharing the 
common lot in this respect ; and the flowers that we place 
in the church at Easter tell us more of dear and lowly 
names in our own home than of the great characters of his- 
tory. We may be permitted to speak here a word of per- 
sonal experience, and our humble " In Memoriam " of a 
gentle, loving, and devoted sister can not but have heart 
and scope enough to rise above all personality and come 
home to the household affections of readers. 

Why should we middle-aged, hard-working, practical, 
and sometimes care-worn people be ashamed to confess 
that we do retain some relics of what usually goes by the 
name of the heart, and are very often tempted to be- 
lieve, in spite of all the world's teaching to the contrary, 
that this organ gains instead of losing vitality, with time, 
so as to compel us to love and to crave to be loved more 
instead of less as the shady hours come on, and the eve- 
ning of life, like the closing day, calls us home and 
opens to us anew'the thoughts, affections, and sociality of 
the morning? I have ventured to pnt this question to 
many shrewd, well-balanced persons, and have generally 
found the answers all on one side, and that the affirmative 
side. I once asked a very pleasant little circle of married 
friends whether they thought they had more or less heart 
as the years rolled on, and they all said that they lived 
more and more in the affections ; and I am quite sure that 
the grayheads in the company, both men and women, said 
so with the most emphasis. It certainly ought to be so; 



350 AMERICAN LIFE. 

and as our nature ripens, and our life enriches its expe- 
rience, and the living and the dead claim a stronger hold 
upon us, we ought to love more, and of course desire to be 
more loved. The old home of our childhood comes nearer 
to us as we climb the hill from which we can see our whole 
journey hither at a glance ; and all new affections touch 
the old chords afresh, and waken the music of the old 
voices and the old familiar faces. 

These Easter flowers are a kind of color and odor music that 
revive my play-days, more than twoscore years ago, in that 
little garden that was the whole world to me then, and the 
little playmate who was my constant companion. We 
were left fatherless in early childhood, she being under four 
years of age, and I but two years older. With our father's 
death our means were stinted, and we left the more costly 
central home for the humbler of our two houses in a retired 
part of the town. Here, however, we had a garden for 
our play-ground, and a river-side for our rambles, and with 
these, children can not be wholly unhappy, and can not, 
though fatherless, be always under a cloud. I remember 
very well that little garden — its few grape-vines and fruit 
trees and vegetables, and above all its flowers. They were 
not the rich blooms of our recent horticulture, and we 
could not boast of any conservatory for pet plants in win- 
ter. The old-fashioned inhabitants of those beds and walks 
were of a very hardy, democratic race, and the roses and 
pinks did not scorn to associate with their plainer neigh- 
bors, and the sweet herbs, the balm, the sage, and marjoram 
were the connecting: middle class between the flowers and 



EASTER FLOWERS. 351 

the turnips, and onions and potatoes. The peony was a 
great favorite because it was so large and so bright to our 
childish eyes, and because, moreover, it was the first to 
peep out of the ground and let us know that spring was 
coming. The lilac, too, was a dear old plant, and its smell 
now always brings back those days, and the flower itself 
has more poetry for me than the rarest and costliest of our 
new exotics. Then, too, that pale yellow flower, that opened 
at evening before your eyes, sometimes as suddenly as 
the wings of a butterfly, and exhaled a sweet and powerful 
fragrance that filled the whole garden, we called it the eve- 
ning primrose, was much prized, and although not of any 
great beauty, it was very suggestive, soothing, and dreamy ; 
quite in the tone of the calm, and pensive, and sometimes 
melancholy hour, when it unfolded its leaves and sent out 
its odor, as if to serenade us in its own humble little way. 
All these old favorites the Easter flowers bring to mind, 
yet only two or three of them keep their place in our day 
in favor; and the roses, carnations, and geraniums on our 
altar, were the only flowers that could claim direct kindred 
with the growths of that old garden in that long since 
deserted home. 

It is well for our children to know how simple were our 
pleasures in those days, and how little it took to set young 
hearts beating with glee. Pennies then went as far as dol- 
lars do now, and at any time two pennies would bring from 
the old dame's candy and fruit shop near by enough of her 
sweet confection, that went by the name of Gibraltar, to 
make an Eden in that garden, whose two little children 



352 AMERICAN LIFE. 

had thus early learned that sorrow and death are in the 
world, and all is not always paradise here now. Then what 
a different value was once set upon books from what is 
now set upon them ? A shilling would buy a story with a 
picture or two that was enough to charm the whole year 
with its pages read time without end. And a two or three 
shilling book, merciful Heavens, what a godsend ! When 
could we exhaust its riches, or be sufficiently grateful for 
the treasure? Museum, circus, theatre, and the like 
were unheard of for years to us ; and when, in time, we 
ventured upon a visit to the neighboring city and saw 
the snakes, and birds, and beasts, and wax-figures of the 
museum, and, most marvelous of all, went for the first time 
to the theatre, and beheld the melodramatic splendors of 
Timour the Tartar, we had as never since the idea that we 
had found the world, and our wisdom-teeth were cut. I 
have never yet got over that play, and am still of the opin- 
ion that it is the gteatest of dramas, and am afraid to test 
my impression by sight. 

We grew up, my little sister and I, and had a good edu- 
cation from elder brothers and sisters, who were in the 
place of parents, and whose care deepened after our moth- 
er's death. My little playmate always kept the humil- 
ity of her character, and sometimes her humility bordered 
on timidity. Yet, in all matters of positive duty, she was 
plucky enough ; and no storm nor heat, no pleasures nor 
dangers, could keep her from her post. The lowliest of us 
all, she rose above us all in the scale of worldly privilege ; 
and the shrinking little girl learned to rule her hundreds of 



EASTER FLOWERS. 353 

loving pupils by her persistent, judicious kindness, and in 
time passed from the school-room to a goodly mansion of 
her own, with all the eomforts and kindness that heart 
should desire. Her garden always smiled under her touch, 
and she was one of those, like St. Rosa of Lima, who have 
a charmed hand and eye for flowers. She loved our Easter 
festival, and when with us on visits she contributed gener- 
ously to its beauty. To me its coming always brings her 
near, and these sweet blooms and odors are full of her 
words and smiles. Since she died, her favorite flowers in 
her garden and conservatory seem to have something of 
her life, and to speak of the loving hand that so carefully 
and wisely tended them. When I look at her pet plants — 
such as her fine collection of fuschias, which were in bloom 
when I saw them last — I can almost believe what some 
theologians teach, that all creation is waiting the hour of 
deliverance, and plants and animals have a dormant soul, 
that one day shall show itself and rise into the life of our 
humanity. It would have been no absurd transition, had 
those fuschias, with their drooping, pensive heads, passed 
first into song-birds, then into fawns or antelopes, and then 
into playful children. 

Her death was sudden, but not surprising ; and in this, 
as in all her trials, her gentle spirit proved its strength. 
On the night before she passed away, when her watchers 
thought her asleep, she started them by repeating, in a 
sweet, and clear, and penetrating voice, some exquisite lines 
that a friend had lately brought from England, and which 



354 AMERICAN LIFE. 

deserve a place among the permanent treasures of our lan- 
guage : 

" Oh ! for the peace that floweth as a river, 
Making life's desert places bloom and smile ; 
Oh ! for that faith to grasp the glad Forever, 
Amid the shadows of earth's Little While ! 

" A little while to wear the veil of sadness : 

To toil with weary steps through miry ways ; 
Then to pour forth the fragrant oil of gladness, 
And clasp the girdle round the robe of Praise. 

" And He who is Himself the Gift and Giver, 
The future glory and the present smile, 
With the bright promise of the glad Forever 
Will light the shadows of earth's Little While." 

I arrived in time to see my sister before she died. We 
spoke cheerfully as well as devoutly together, and remem- 
bered the old times, and plays, and talks in the intervals of 
our Scriptures and prayer. She was the same gentle, 
lowly, faithful, devoted, loving creature when she was dying 
as during her whole life, and even the approach of death 
could not put away from her look and lips the pleasantry 
that always mingled with her comforting. Her brother re- 
peated to her as she died the ancient communion hymn, 
" Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the com- 
pany in heaven," etc. ; and the blessed comforter of so many 
years, the most angelic spirit that I have ever known on 
earth, went to fulfil her ministry in brighter worlds. Very 



EASTER FLOWERS. 355 

sober and prudential people say that her monument tells 
only the simple truth when it says of her, 

f 

" She kept God's Commandments 
And lived Christ's Beatitudes." 

At our Easter festival we usually send to bereaved families 
some little memorial of those who have gone. Besides the 
tokens sent to her husband on the Easter after her death, 
we sent to the Orphan's Home, of which she was the pre- 
siding Manager, an illuminated tablet with words of Scrip- 
ture and a cross of unfading flowers. I saw it there in the 
parlor last summer, while the orphans were heard singing in 
their school-room beyond. 

Her eldest brother who looked upon her death-bed bore 
ever after in his look and life the power of the scene. He 
never afterward spoke with indifference of divine things, and 
seemed to look to a good angel who called him to her with 
a sister's deathless love. He was a peculiar man and of 
talents far greater than were called out in his business life. 
He united with Franklin's studious thrift the love of nature 
that he delighted to trace in St. Pierre, and the pleasure in 
studying animals that he so appreciated in La Fontaine. 
He wa^uite a master of French Literature, and in his last 
days he amused himself, as for years, with his favorite 
authors. I parted from him a few hours before his death, 
and our last day together we rode through his favorite old 
haunts, and saw the fields, hills and waters that he loved; and 
called at the country home of friends, who gave us flowers 



356 AMERICAN LIFE. 

that meant for him more than was intended, and bore a 
presentiment of the last Easter when flowers were placed 
upon the altar as memorials of his passing aw^ty. The eld- 
est and the youngest of our family are now remembered 
together, the first and the thirteenth children of parents 
whose twelfth child now pens these words. 

I know very well that it is very perilous to indulge in 
personal griefs and remembrances apart from great princi- 
ples and associations ; and this very peril we would shun by 
making our home and church life such allies that all our pri- 
vate affections may be consecrated instead of being crushed 
at the altar. We need a religion as large at least as the 
human heart ; and we protest against that prosy, dry, tech- 
nical theology that is forever making the sanctuary a battle- 
ground or a logic-mill, and shutting out the facts and affec- 
tions of life, the living realities of man and God and heaven. 
We do not ask for sentimentalism, sensationalism, scenes, 
or pageants in the sanctuary ; and we believe that whatever 
is against good sense can not help religion. But we do 
claim that whatever is beautiful, as well as whatever is 
good and true, belongs to God, and is of the essence of the 
Christian religion. We are confident that the new age is 
in some way to restore to the ministry of the beautiful its 
rightful alliance with goodness and truth, and thaj^we can 
make no greater mistake than to take it for granted that 
religion must be of necessity rude and ugly, and leave to 
superstition and priestcraft the work of illustrating that 
there is such a thing as the beauty of holiness. 

As a nation we are learning to express our public spirit 



EASTER FLOWERS. 357 

in beautiful symbols, and our war and our peace have been 
rich in aesthetic lessons. How much of practical as well as 
moral beauty^was associated with the event that so sepa- 
rated, yet united our war and our peace, the death of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. The Nation laid their Easter Flowers on his 
tomb, and the civil life strangely repeated the lesson of the 
Church life. I found our good women gathered in tears on 
that terrible Saturday for the usual task of adorning the sanc- 
tuary and doubting, whether to wreathe the roses and lilies, 
the pinks and geraniums, or to drape the church in mourn- 
ing. The pastor advised them to follow the wisdom of the 
gospel and church, and connect their sorrow and their com- 
fort with their Lord's death and rising, and enter more 
deeply than ever into the true Easter joy, reserving mourn- 
ing for the coming funeral season. The usual service went 
on in all its sacred beauty, and central within the chancel 
under the great cross of white lilies stood a stand of rustic 
work, twined with rich wreaths and drooping with pendant 
vines, and bearing a pyramid of white flowers, inlaid with 
Abraham Lincoln's initials in violets and tipped with the 
Cape Jasmine, whose rare fragrance was thought to be a 
good token of the gratitude of Africa, its native soil, to the 
man who had been under God the African's Emancipator. 

We have made great advances in the arts of beautifying 
our private houses and grounds, but are but beginning to 
carry the good work into our public life. We are yet to 
learn that no task is complete, no principle is established, no 
institution effective until beauty gives the finish and perpetu- 
ates the use. What is painted and carved and sung is 



358 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ever fair and ever young ; and the lines of grace are 
lines of power. The aim should be to make the truths and 
scenes and characters of religion move in lines of beauty, 
and so win our private experiences aud personal affections 
to join in these movements, and so lift our home interests 
into fellowship with the universal faith and communion. 
In many ways this good work may go forward ; but our 
present office is not a very ambitious one, and we are only 
trying to say some of the thoughts that came to us, among 
the happy children, with the cheerful carols that spoke the 
great hope, as we looked upon our Easter flowers, and saw 
Christ's cross and crown set before us in such wealth of 
bloom and sweetness as to make the very sepulchre a garden, 
and lift us all up to Him who is the Resurrection and the 
Life. Every rose and lily, nay, every blade of grass and 
leaf, means more after the lessons of such a day. 



XV. 

Toward Sunset. 



TOWARD SUNSET. 361 



TOWARD SUNSET. 

mHOSE of us who live in cities are hardly aware of the 
changes of the hours as they appear on the dial, and 
are noted by country people who live in close relation with 
sunshine. We can readily, indeed, tell what o'clock it is ; 
and the clocks that look upon us, and anon speak to us 
from so many towers, imply that we have lost the primi- 
tive calendar of the hours, and need the cunning hand of 
art to make up for the loss. In the fields, under the open 
heavens, among the flowers, and trees, and birds, and beasts, 
we find constant signals of the passing time ; and an ex- 
pert eye might perhaps tell the hour of the day, not only 
by the shadows cast by the sun, but by the sights and 
sounds of the landscape, from the aspect or fragrance of 
the flowers, or the note of birds and insects, or the turn of 
the cattle. Each hour has not only its external signs, but 
also its interior marks, and the mood of the life keeps step 
with the march of the day. Morning is what it pretends 
to be in the country, and not a sleepy appendage to the 
night, as it is apt to be with us in cities. It insists upon 

P 



362 AMERICAN LIFE. 

opening our eyes, and does not allow us to hide behind 
brick walls, or forests of chimneys, or close curtains and 
shutters. It comes upon us in a blaze of glory, and en- 
counters no rivalry from gas-lights in the street or the 
chamber. Its rays in themselves are highly stimulating, 
real arrows of Apollo, with points not rusted by city va- 
pors, nor blunted by contact with city brick and stone. 
The morning light itself in the open country is the best of 
tonics, and braces the will to its work. Labor begins with 
its dawning, and continues with its continuance, and closes 
with its closing. Sunrise and sunset are the natural limits 
of the farmer's day, and although city habits may urge 
upon him the need of the ten-hour system with good rea- 
son, the result will probably be to deduct the surplus time 
from the burning mid-day, and to keep the old system of 
beginning with sunrise and ending with sunset. 

The intellectual life in the country shares considerably 
in the influence of natural conditions. The student there 
more readily works at his books and pen in the morning, 
and catches the habit of the early bird. Hard study he 
does cheerfully before his city friends are stirring, and con- 
tinues at his task until the sun nears the meridian, and the 
heat in summer abates his vigor. As evening comes on 
his mind is moved in a different vein, and tends to such 
reading and meditation as rather entertains than tasks the 
faculties, more fond of being the guest than the host, or of 
yielding to genial companionship than providing for others' 
nurture by painstaking care. Or, if he is moved to play 
the host, it is rather to such guests as bring their own wel- 



TOWARD SUNSET. 363 

come than to such as need any anxious attention. We 
there with him keep open house to the thoughts, fancies, 
and remembrances that come to us of themselves, and easi- 
ly make themselves at home. The sunset hour is es- 
pecially fruitful in such companions, and it is not easy to 
face the pavilion whose gorgeous curtains are receiving the 
parting day without feeling our own hearts opening in fel- 
lowship to receive and entertain all friends, scenes, and 
visions that ever passed from our sight. 

The old religion made great account of this sunset hour, 
and the vespers of the ancient church evidently belong to 
its pensive and solemn inspiration. The vesper hymn 
ought to be sung while the sun is sinking from sight ; and 
the simple and beautiful prayer of the old English 
Even Song, beginning, " Lighten our darkness, we beseech 
thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all 
perils and dangers of this night ! " has great Nature herself 
for the intoning priest at this mystic time. We, indeed, 
who live in cities may hardly be able to tell when it is sun- 
set, for we may be wholly in the shadow in our parlor or 
our pew, while the sunlight may be blazing upon the church- 
spire or the house-top. In fact, within the city walls the 
sun rises and sets to most people unannounced, and the day 
and night fail to utter to our ears their most eloquent 
speech. We can, indeed, make up for the loss by especial 
helps of art and companionship. We may have our witch- 
ing twilight hour of charmed fellowship, and hardly miss 
the glow of the evening red in the sky, while faces are lit 
up with hallowed recollections, and friendly eyes shine 



364 AMERICAN LIFE. 

upon us with the light of other days ; or we can rebel 
against our exile, and, like the Orientals, we can go to 
the house-top to muse or pray. He is a happy man 
whose house stands well not only with the social world, 
where no pests annoy, but also with the elements of na- 
ture, so as to give free play to the air and the light. 
Commend us to a position that allows the evening sun- 
light to pour into our window, and tell us its witching 
story of all that we have ever loved, whether lost or kept. 
We prize a good western exposure more than an east- 
ern, because it is so full of poetry, and because, more- 
over, we are more sure of being awake to its charms 
than to the charms of the morning ray. For a man to 
be sure of seeing the sunset from his own home as long 
as he lives is happiness rare indeed, and ought to be a 
great element in his education and comfort. The world, 
in the city is so restless and troubled that we need con- 
stant soothing, and if we can not keep a chaplain or 
poet to cheer or to calm us, we may thus keep the most 
practiced and efficient of comforters, who has been doing 
God's blessed work since the first day closed in the bow- 
ers of Paradise. 

In the city it is not easy, however, to choose our 
prospect, and a poet or devotee may find himself fixed 
between inexorable walls that present nothing more va- 
ried and animating than rows of windows or stacks of 
chimneys. In the country we may do very much what 
we choose with nature, and look to all quarters of the 
heavens as freely as the weather-cock that follows the 



TOWARD SUNSET. 365 

veering breezes to all points of the compass. I confess 
to having paid some attention to the points of the com- 
pass in the fitting up as well as the laying out of our 
small domain ; and our little farm makes me fancy some- 
times that the whole globe is ours, and north, south, east, 
and west are waiting our bidding, and a few steps can 
transport us from the morning land to the evening land, 
or from the pole to the tropics. The last enlargement 
of our range of vision is given by clearing up a wild 
tangle of cat-briar and brush that shut in a charming little 
grove, which crowns a hillock that looks toward the set- 
ting sun. The work was thoroughly done, the ground 
grubbed and graded to allow sweet honey-suckle and 
green grass to carpet the earth before covered with 
weeds. At the foot of the stately cedars the clematis or 
virgin's bower was freely planted, to furnish an awning 
faker than the tent-maker can provide. A belt of ever- 
greens — the Norway spruce, the Scotch fir, and Austrian 
pine — was set out to encircle the whole as a kind of 
rural Pantheon. A rustic seat is placed on the tuft of 
the hillock so as to face the west, and a winding path 
of some hundred yards connects this pleasant haunt with 
our cottage. I call the place Sunset, and the seat Ves- 
per Seat. If there seems to be affectation or conceit in 
this arrangement, so let it be. We all have our hobbies, 
why should not I have mine? One man fancies horses, 
another dogs, another yachts, another tends most to wine, 
or cigars, or to some other or to all forms of dainty 
living ; while the ladies are free to set their affections on 



366 AMERICAN LIFE. 

all things below, from puppies in pantaloons to poodles in 
collars, from parrots in caps and curls to jDarrots in cages. 
I have a fancy for books and nature, and especially for 
such combinations of the two as brings the life of literature 
into play with the life of nature. This pretty evening 
haunt does this ; and all the Muses are generally to be 
found there about sunset, with their mystic mother Mnemo- 
syne, ready to soothe and cheer you so far as you are will- 
ing to open your heart to them at that witching hour. 
Come and see me sometime, and we will talk over this 
matter together under influences less j^rc-sy than my poor 
pen can bestow. 

But why dwell on individual tastes and especial instan- 
ces ? We all know very well that there is an evening ton,e 
that speaks in nature, human life, and in religion. The 
sounds of nature are then in a sympathetic, plaintive strain, 
and the minor key prevails in the notes of birds and in- 
sects. If there be music in colors, they may be said to 
speak the same language and sing the same songs with the 
sparrow, the whippoorwill, and nightingale. Some of the 
sunset tints are glaring and gorgeous indeed, but the gent- 
ler and more pensive shadings prevail, and the violets and 
kindred hues, that are like the sweet tones of the soprano, 
are sure to lead on the coming night, and give their pen- 
sive cadence to the vesper hymn of nature, as chanted by 
the notes of her prismatic scale. The rays of the sun 
themselves seem to have a different quality from that which 
marks their morning glow. They are less stimulating and 
more soothing, as if vacated of the electric force that sends 



TOWARD SUNSET. 367 

theui fresh at dawn from Apollo's new-strung bow. We 
are not sure what the physical fact is, but to us the eve- 
ning ray has a peculiarly soothing influence, and it seems 
to stir less the vital powers of plant and animal. It may 
be, indeed, that the change is in the objects acted upon, 
not in the agent, and that the weary earth, after yielding 
for the day to the call of her lord in the sky, no longer 
heeds the spur as in the morning, and the slanting solar 
beam abates its noonday directness, and falls upon tired 
and exhausted nature. The sun himself is apparently 
never weary and never rests, yet his virtue comes out va- 
riously as he is differently touched, and his evening quality 
to his subjects differs from that of the morning and the 
noon. 

The nervous system of animals and men, and perhaps of 
plants, if they have any, appear to have its evening mood. 
It is more sensitive and less active, more ready to be acted 
upon than to act, more prone to play than work, to muse 
than to reason. Some of the flowers evidently have their 
twilight sensibility, and send forth a rare fragrance that 
made Linnaeus call them melancholy flowers. The cattle 
are in a mild, genial temper, as the poet noted when he 
said : 

" The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea." 

"We of human kind are in the tone of nature, and the 
more mystical functions of our being come into play. Our 
senses, sensibilities, thoughts, and fancies seem to move of 
themselves, and to be possessed by peculiar visitants. The 



368 AMERICAN LIFE. 

night side of life opens upon us in harmony with the night 
side of nature. The eye has its visions and the ear its voices 
without any straining of the powers of attention. The eye, if 
fixed on vacancy, is not vacant ; and the ear, though arrested 
by no engrossing sound, yet is in a hearing spirit ; and the 
senses wait upon inward powers, ready to serve such spirits 
as may rise from the deep or come down from the heavens. 
The memory is wonderfully moved, and opens her great 
theatre of her own accord, lights her lamps, and passes be- 
fore us her manifold scenes, and rehearses the life-drama, 
that she is always working upon and never finishing. She 
often shows us facts and faces that we had forgotten and 
could never recall by any act of our own will. This spon- 
taneous function of memory is too little appreciated in our 
usual estimate of this faculty, and we have absurdly given 
over to the routine of dunces and book-worms a power that 
is full of inspiration, and capable of informing past and pre- 
sent with the light of humanity of God. A great artist 
is this very memory, and in a manner the mother of all arts, 
reproducing the materials and images of the past with 
new features, combinations, and powers, and not only re- 
collecting but remembering the rich treasures in her store- 
house. 

That action or passion of the mind, or both action and 
j^assion, that we call Meditation, opens itself to us most 
readily as the evening draws on, and we find ourselves Think- 
ing unawares, and that unconscious movement of the mind 
from which the best thoughts spring, appears. If we have 
been thinking all day upon some perplexing subject or knotty 



TOWARD SUNSET. 369 

problem, without making much progress, we may find, as 
we sit at sunset, without any effort of forced attention, that 
the difficulty is cleared away at once, and the subject opens 
itself to us in full proportion and light. Especially In all sub- 
jects of higher interest, or such as call for the affections and 
fancy, and are capable of inspiration, is this mood of spon- 
taneous meditation effective. Genius — which every soul has 
undoubtedly to some extefft, and enables us all in some way 
to have inspirations, and to be possessed by superior pow- 
ers — generally loves the sunset hour, and joins its wizard 
spell to the witchery of nature. Goethe, as quoted by 
Eckermann, spoke profoundly of this experience when he 
said, " Every production of highest art, every significant 
insight, every invention, every great thought, which bears 
fruits and has consequences, stands in no man's power, and 
is raised above all earthly might. Such things man has to 
regard as unlooked-for gifts from above, as pure children of 
God, which he is to receive and honor with grateful joy. In 
such cases man is to be considered as the instrument of a 
higher Providence — as a fitting vessel for the reception of 
divine influence." 

We believe that we all have something of this receptive 
power, that is open to Heaven's best gifts. Yet our habits 
of life and methods of culture make too little of it, and 
spur us on to too much mere will-work, as if we were 
forced to do every thing, or almost every thing, for our- 
selves, and as if God and Nature would do little or nothing 
for us. It may be that the human will tends westward, and 
we who live on this side of the Atlantic lack the receptive 

P2 



370 AMERICAN LIFE. 

spirit that so marks the Orientals, and that having all the 
world before us, a new country to make, we bear ourselves 
as if nothing were finished and to be enjoyed, and every 
thing wefe still to be done. The evening hour, fitly used, 
helps us correct this folly, and gives us something of the 
Oriental's quiet contemplation and receptive sentiment. 
The sunset tells us that the day is done, and the solemn 
light of history looks upon us from its parting rays, and 
shows us an image of the great past in this one passing day 
as emphatically as if it were a thousand years. We find 
our impatience checked, our feverish haste soothed, as we 
behold the earth sinking into her repose after toil ; and na- 
ture, before so anxious and striving, is now peaceful, and 
moves retrospection instead of care. It is well to keep open 
soul to this tranquil vision, and let it do as it will with us. 
We find then that we are prepared to receive that majestic 
guest, and that we are born of Him who made the universe, 
and our better acquaintance is constantly bringing out the 
closeness of the relation. All the senses, especially the 
master-senses, the eye and ear, unveil their curtains to wel- 
come the visitation. The breeze, the ripple or dash of the 
waters, the insects, the birds, the cattle, the evening tones 
of home and village, the shadows of the earth, the colors of 
the sky, the light of the stars — all touch answering chords 
within us, and the harmony is greater the less we try to 
force it, and the more we leave the elements within and 
without to their own free communion. Each sense is a 
mystic under such inspiration, and even the palate and the 
nostrils rise into priestly dignity, as some stray fragrance of 



TOWARD SUNSET. 371 

a flower seems a delicious dream, and each sip of the cheer- 
ing cup or taste of luscious fruit interprets the dogma of 
transubstantiation, and tells us that it is not wholly absurd 
to believe that matter may rise into spirit, or spirit may 
descend into matter. 

We are yet to learn how great a grace and indeed a vir- 
tue is geniality, or openness to all good influences and true 
fellowship, and that life would not be nearly as poor and 
hard as it is if we would only take the gifts that God and 
Nature are so ready to give us. If we were more genial 
we must be not only more cheerful and calm, but also more 
earnest and original ; and nothing more saddens and impov- 
erishes us than the idea that we must be always exhausting 
ourselves, and never filling up — always on the go, and 
never in perfect rest. We are . nearly all overworked, and 
what we call our pleasure is often our hardest work, and 
keeps us forever on the drive. Society goes with a rush as 
much as business, and tongues and plates clatter at night 
after the clink of dollars and the din of hammers cease with 
the going down of the sun. As soon as day ends we try to 
quarrel with God's law, and force night into an unnatural 
day at our presumptuous bidding, reversing instead of per- 
fecting the true economy of the hours. We will not quar- 
rel with art for trying to seize and continue the spell of na- 
ture, and prolong the witchery of twilight by music and 
conversation, paintings and the drama, and the other devices 
that refresh the genial soul, and entertain without ex- 
hausting the waiting intellect, sensibility, and fancy. The 
longer we live in the great city the more are we convinced 



372 AMERICAN LIFE. 

that art is one of the most rational and healthful of influ- 
ences among us, and is doing much to carry out the work 
of nature, and save us from the follies of artificial society. 
An evening hour or two in a picture-gallery or at the opera 
prolongs the charm of sunset, and deepens its delight with- 
out of necessity destroying its tranquillity. There is some- 
thing in all true art that is in the evening tone, and suggests 
the finished day, and knocks at the door of the genial soul. 
Each picture or song is, in its way, a rounded whole, and 
asks to be taken into our hospitality as a ready guest to 
soothe and cheer, not to fret and fever us. The work of 
art is of itself something done already, and even a picture 
of sunrise or the morning chorus of the hunters is a finished 
composition, and thus bears with it something of the ex- 
pression of the parting day. But society, as it generally 
prevails, is unfinished, restless, striving, uncomfortable, and 
adds the glare and hurry of the morning to the borrowed 
vexations, the chills and heats, the crowds and blaze of the 
artificial evening. "We would give more for an hour at sun- 
set with a friend or two, under genial sky, than for all the 
midnight magnificence of our crowded and heated drawing- 
rooms. It is one of the growing charms of our city life that 
we are not forced to go far from home to enjoy this solace, 
and nature is now opening her Eden in the very midst of 
our rising homes. Our great Park is reclaiming the very 
hour by many most of all neglected ; and the jeweled clasp 
that binds the mantle of night upon the bosom of day, that 
sunset hour which is so often lost at the dinner-table or in 
the after-dinner nap, is becoming a favorite hour with mul- 



TOWARD SUNSET. 373 

titudes to revel in the charms of our public gardens, groves, 
and waters. Art, too, is helping out the spell, and combin- 
ing her voices and visions with the concerts and galleries of 
nature. God crown the union until the whole city enjoys 
the delight, and pleasure rises into refinement, and society 
becomes a school of education. 

We remarked lately in an essay that the Christian church 
has reversed the order of the natural year, and made the 
autumn and winter of nature the spring and summer of the 
soul, beginning her spring-time at Advent, which generally 
opens with December, and fixing the two great festivals of 
Christmas and Easter at seasons when amonsf us the earth 
withholds her bloom. We do not quarrel at this arrange- 
ment, and are glad to have the inward life genial as the 
outward world is cold and dreary. The heart, too, enjoys 
the contrast, and the Christmas carol and Yule-tide log meet 
the craving for social joy and godly mirth when snow and 
ices bind the landscape. It is wise to follow the same prin- 
ciple in the order of the day, and not reverse, but rather 
interpret and complete the meaning of the hours by a just 
method. Night is the winter of the day in its darkness 
and coldness, and we need therefore do what we can to 
cheer it into a summer of the soul, instead of yielding pas- 
sively to its humors. Probably, if left to ourselves, we would 
go to sleep soon after sundown with the beasts and birds ; 
and not so much our individual inclinations as the habits of 
society keep us awake, and secure to us our round of pleas- 
ures and occupations. What we ought to seek in the round 
of the day, as of the year, is such adaptations as carry out 



374 AMERICAN LIFE. 

instead of annulling the laws of God and nature. In win- 
ter we wisely follow the reaction of the heart from the chill 
of nature, and try to make life genial and spiritual without 
vainly forcing the season into an unnatural summer ; so we 
should make the evening social and thoughtful, without 
trying to bring back the cares and worry and glare of the 
day. The true evening tone of life is a matter that we are 
to study as never before — to make it genial without dissi- 
pation, intellectual without straining, refining without affec- 
tation, and devout without pretention. 

It would be well if our higher education as well as our 
social accomplishments paid more regard to what may be 
called the evening tone of thought and fellowship. Surely 
as a people we greatly need geniality ; and as we put away 
convival excesses we ought to cherish the convivial virtues, 
and have hearty companionship without relying upon the 
decanter or the beer-mug. Our leading men ought to help 
us, and we ought to help them to live more at ease and on 
terms of greater social simplicity, and look upon communion 
as quite as essential as originality. We ought to be willing 
to come together more quietly and happily, without de- 
manding the zest of some great excitement or the novelty 
of some great demonstration, whether of numbers or tal- 
ent. In our homes, schools, conventions, churches, we 
should have calm fellowship, allow an hour at least for 
quiet communion, as under the setting sun or the evening 
star, and not insist up on being forever under the spur of 
some peculiar agitation or impassioned appeal, or even orig- 
inal thought. We exhaust ourselves and our leaders by the 



TOWARD SUNSET. 375 

constant demand for excitement, and err as much as if we 
insisted that the sun should never set, and life should 
always be in the noonday blaze. 

If we have a brilliant man, we insist upon his always 
shining, without remembering that his lamp must rest and 
be filled that it may duly shine, and that even genius keeps 
its original force only by due fellowship with other minds ; 
and geniality is the receptive side of originality, the mother 
heart of that masculine head. We ask the day always to 
continue, the flower always to bloom, the vine always to 
bear. In fact, there is something tragic in the possession 
of genius, as of beauty, and they who worship it cruelly 
insist upon having its light and joy always. Few brilliant 
men live long and bear constant fruit, partly, perhaps, be- 
cause such rare gifts are too costly and exhaustive to last long, 
but frequently because they are not allowed to rest and lie 
fallow. In no one respect is the prevailing error more con- 
spicuously shown than in our church methods. We gener- 
ally exhaust or kill our best preachers by insisting that they 
shall shine always and be one perpetual day. We ask them 
to shine not a few times in the year, but every week, if 
not every day ; and riot once, but twice or three times the 
same day we exact of them the rare and costly fruits of 
original thought and composition. Our people do this, not 
meaning any harm, but ignorant of the first principles of 
mental economy; and they often quietly set down the 
original gifts of their minister as part of the fixed social 
and spiritual capital upon which they and their children are to 
live and make a figure in this world and in the next. The 



376 AMERICAN LIFE. 

result is that our ablest preachers die young, or are driven 
from the pulpit hopeless invalids before the time when men 
of other professions have matured their gifts and fame. 
The secret of this appalling fact lies in the exhausting na- 
ture of original thinking and composition, and in the inces- 
sant call for brilliancy and fire, and the refusal of ample 
quiet and communion. 

The whole country has lately rung with the name of 
one of our most gifted orators and writers, who died before 
completing his fortieth year. We will not undertake to 
fathom the secret purpose of Divine Providence in remov- 
ing from the world so soon a mind so rare and a temper so 
genial and fascinating. But it seems to us rather a marvel 
that he lived so long than that he lives no longer. We 
hear of monthly, and even perpetual roses, and ever-bearing 
berries, that keep their promise for a few years during the 
summer-time; but who has heard of a vine or tree in per- 
petual bloom, or fruitage without respite? As well, ask 
the vine or apple to put forth fresh leaves and fruit forever, 
as expect the human brain to be forever originating thought. 
Starr King died from the effect of disease upon a constitu- 
tion overwrought by the work of original composition and 
exciting utterance. In his case this may have been, and 
probably was, well, for the especial need demanded especial 
effort, and the pen and voice call for heroes and martyrs as 
well as the sword. He evidently was aware of the exces- 
sive demands made upon his strength in the pulpit, and in 
the arrangements for his new church in California he ex- 
pressly guarded against the prevailing error of making the 



TOWARD SUNSET. 377 

preacher's brain the principal and almost the soul fountain 
of light and life, and he introduced an order of devotional 
service that secures communion, instead of depending al- 
ways upon originality. He read wisely the lesson of the 
evening hour far away on that pacific shore, and instituted 
a form of vespers very much upon the idea of the ancient 
church, with modifications suited to our own age and coun- 
try. The progress of a similar service among our people so 
generally is one of the noteworthy signs of the times ; and 
it is a remarkable fact that its calming influence is more 
craved by the popular taste than the old sensation preach- 
ing ; and crowds throng to church to hear the old hymn 
and chants and scriptures, more comforted by the brief ex- 
hortation or exposition than by the usual elaborate and 
lengthy sermon. 

Without going into any ecclesiastic antiquities, it might 
interest readers to know the temper and usage of the ancient 
church as to the evening hours, and have a glimpse of the 
forms of devotion and treasures of literature that have 
gathered around the vesper service. The tone of the ser- 
vice is eminently affectionate and homelike. The Mag- 
nificat, or Hymn of Mary of Nazareth, is the favor- 
ite melody that has been sung for ages immemorial, 
even in protestant England, as evening comes on and 
the lengthening shadows move thoughts of home on 
earth or heavenward. As the cultus of the Virgin Mother 
grew into the creed of Christendom the Catholic vespers 
were more given to Mariolatry, and probably most of the 
hymns of this class were inspired by the romance of this 



378 AMERICAN LIFE. 

season. It is hard to believe that this feeling has prompted 
so much of the lyrical literature of Catholicism. The modern 
reader is astounded in looking over the grand collection of 
Latin hymns issued in Germany to find that so many of them 
are in honor of Mary. Of the three volumes of hymns, the 
second is wholly filled with lyrics of this class, and is larger 
than the first volume, that is devoted to the hymns in praise 
of God and his angels. If there is sad superstition in this, 
there is also something of our better nature ; and we will 
not wholly scorn the human heart for seeking refuge from a 
hard and monkish theology at the feet of that lovely vision 
of faith, the Blessed Mother, who was thought to be 
first of God's creatures and Queen of Heaven. The new 
Catholic poet Aubrey de Vere has given new life and beau- 
ty to that old faith by presenting it with the refinement 
and philosophy of the 19th century, and one can admire 
the poetry of the May carols without accepting the the- 
ology. 

Even our great iconoclast, Theodore Parker, does not 
escape this tendency to run for shelter to a divine Mother's 
arms; and he constantly preached of and prayed to the 
mother God, whom he regarded as coeternal and coessen- 
tial with the Eternal Father. To him God was both 
Mother and Father ; and his life would have been longer, 
and his ministry more edifying, if he had held more of 
his service in the motherly key, and spared the public 
much of his self-will and antagonism. He had a kind 
heart in private relations ; but his ministry was not always 
kind, but struck rudely at the Mother Church, and mother 



TOWARD SUNSET. 379 

faith and love of the greater part even of tolerant Chris- 
tians. His voice sometimes, indeed, calls us home to God, 
but deals more with battle-cries than household words. 
His divine Mother is presented more as an idea than as 
a power, and he had little love for the great house, the 
Church Universal, where maternal love for ages has 
nursed her children and guarded them from harm, and to 
which she calls all poor prodigals back as to their na- 
tive home. He held no evening service generally, and 
his morning utterances were more frequently a war-cry 
than a homily, and not even his devout prayer could al- 
ways secure the hearer's edification. The gentler spirit 
was in nim, and few felt more than he the spell of the 
evening, or could have given in his better hours a richer 
book of vesper meditations to the world. He felt the 
maternal pulses in the heart of nature and humanity, 
and undoubtedly a considerable part of his evident worry 
and dissatisfaction with himself came from the conviction 
that he was often at sword's points with himself; and 
his sharp invective belied the tenderness of his affections, 
and his hand brandished the sword and his head planned 
the campaign, while the dove of peace was nestling in 
his heart. 

The day must come when such unquiet spirits find 
rest, and cease to make us restless. Why should not the 
large humanity, and bold convictions, and progressive 
faith of our advanced thinkers conquer for us and for them 
a peace, and give us peaceful evening contemplations after 
their day of toil, and storm, and strife is over? They 



380 AMERICAN LIFE. 

ought to help us to a home affection deeper and broader 
than that which seeks the family hearth-stone ; they ought 
to make us feel at home with the master-minds of 
our race, or domesticate us in the great family of hu- 
man kind. They should help us, as the day wanes and 
the night comes, to see in majestic vision the great day's 
work of the children of God through continuous ages, 
and hear the ascription that rises from them all as they 
salute each other before, the eternal throne. Something 
of this great brotherhood we are already feeling, and at 
twilight not only do the faces of lost kindred and friends 
come back to us, but the forms of the great thinkers, 
heroes, and saints, who have made us all brothers, come 
to mind, and we are no longer alone, but with the great 
family that the Eternal Father has been gathering to- 
gether throughout the ages. Every book, picture, wall, 
garden, house, church, then, has a monumental character, 
and opens to us the things that have been, and makes the 
mighty past smile upon us and speak- to us as a familiar 
friend. Looking out from our quiet vesper seat, I see 
the spire on the western hills, and the stones in the 
grave-yard near looming up in the evening shadows, and 
with the setting sun come thoughts of home that do not 
end with earthly habitations, nor merely dream of some 
bower of bliss within those gorgeous curtains that veil that 
pavilion of gold that seems to welcome the vanishing day. 
It is good at such times to muse and chat, as mind and 
tongue will have it, and we have taj^en you, kind reader, 
into our confidence, and seated you by our side. Good- 
evening, and then good-night ! 

THE END. 



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Mrs. Hughs's Ornaments Discovered. 



The Clergyman's Orphan ; the Infidel 
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